After being in crypto for the last 5 years, today I found out that I became a victim of a cyber attack. A wallet hack to be more precise.
I haven’t used my Exodus wallet in many months, possibly more than 8 months actually, so I had a bit of a shock today, when I opened it and found that I only have 2 EOS in there. Prior to this my notes are showing that I had 32 EOS, 516 ANT and some tiny amount of ETH (0.20) but all I see right now is 2 EOS which are staked, all else has been drained and it’s happened back in February… 14th of February nonetheless – what a great way to celebrate Valentine’s Day, right?
The theft is not too big for me to lose sleep over it, but it is a bad way to start the day, so I decided to make a lemonade out of this lemon that life is throwing at me and write about it as a reminder to all of you who follow this blog – please use hardware wallets and don’t risk your hard-earned crypto.
The two best cold wallets I have are Ledger Nano X and Cobo Vault Pro – both devices are around $100 (more or less) which could seem a not-so-cheap option, but when it comes to security, that’s not a price tag bigger than what you can lose if you aren’t protecting your crypto properly.
It is still unknown to me how my Exodus wallet got compromised and I am waiting for their team to investigate and give me more details, but it’s worth mentioning that I only have that wallet as a standalone app on my desktop computer (windows) and I do not use the mobile app. My password is not an easy one either. It’s a few words, separated with space between them, something that is unusual and harder to crack than the typical one-word passwords. Yet, that didn’t stop someone from making a few transfers on that eponymous Valentine’s Day and taking out all my Aragon tokens, Ethereum, DAI and swapping EOS for Monero, thus covering their tracks.
This is really a Red Alert for anyone who is keeping their coins in a cloud wallet or even a hybrid wallet like Exodus, which was deemed to be safer than most web-based wallets since it operates as a computer-only software and as such it is not constantly connected to the web.
Needless to say, I am ever so grateful for not keeping more funds in Exodus, I moved all my coins to Ledger and my Cobo wallets long time ago. This is what saved me. Yet another reason to spread your crypto into various wallets, so that if such a hack occurs, you can be a little less vulnerable and hopefully your different wallets and devices will have different passwords and won’t be so easy to hack.
You can see my blog posts about both the Ledger and the Cobo devices and it’s worth mentioning that I have a deal with Cobo, where anyone who buys it with my link, can use my code JORDAN5 to get an extra discount.
Ledger doesn’t have this offer, but their device is a little bit cheaper anyway, so you’re in good hands with either of these devices.
In conclusion, I will only add that exchanges and cloud wallets are even more vulnerable to hacks and I also do not recommend keeping coins there, the bottom line is – you either have a cold wallet or you are at high risk at all times.
Play it safe and keep your coins in secure, offline storage, for better peace of mind.
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What a great post. Thank you for sharing this! I’m going to send it to all my friends.
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I’m truly enjoying the design and layout of your blog. It’s a very easy on the eyes which makes it much more pleasant for me to come here and visit more often. Did you hire out a designer to create your theme? Exceptional work!
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Hi, I was looking for some info about Exodus wallet and find your post. Did Exodus team managed to find out what has happened there, was it your ‘human like’ fault or some issue with Exodus itself?
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they think it’s my email being hacked and they send an email with your secret key that you should keep. I don’t think that’s the case, because if my email got hacked, there would have been way more damage than just Exodus. I didn’t follow up anymore, it is what it is.
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“they send an email with your secret key that you should keep” <– I'll never be using Exodus then.
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Just saw this morning, my Exodus account totally liquidated. Support doesn’t seem too concerned, just said I need to report it to authorities, what authorities? Just bought a cold storage wallet. Luckily most of my crypto on another exchange.
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