Electrum: how do i get my money back from update scam

[dilly23]

it was a pop up for 3.3.4 and bam all my bitcoin is sent somewhere what is the problem

[situps89420]

Same here. This really sucks

[situps89420]

The same exact thing happened to me. Updated and then all of the bitcoins
in my account were gone. Any help would be so appreciated

On Sat, Feb 2, 2019 at 3:03 PM Cryptolista [e-mail] wrote:

I did an update and my bitcoins were transferred without my authorization,
I'm desperate, help me!

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[SomberNight]

You were probably a victim of a phishing attack.
The main issue was discussed in https://github.com/spesmilo/electrum/issues/4968 and since fixed in newer versions of Electrum.
You installed software from a random website that took your coins. This is bitcoin. There is nothing we can do.
What you have installed is malware, so you should remove it from your computer. If you want to be serious, reinstall the whole operating system.

[ecdsa]

@Cryptolista sorry for your loss. we have been displaying a warning message on our wesite for the last month.

[SomberNight]

I did an update and my bitcoins were transferred without my authorization

But how can this happen? There was no virus on my computer. You're responsible for that, not me.

You have said yourself that you installed an "update". That update that you download from a random website and installed is the virus.

Reinstall? Obviously I'll never again use it again!

I'm talking about the operating system. Windows/MacOS/Linux. If you are serious, you reinstall it.

[wtoung]

how many suffered like us? waste of our trust to rely and use electrum wallets :(
sad story, all my online property lost and gone due to you?
any responsibility you and dev team can kindly advice to restore our family life and fund?
thanks,
i trusted yours and never opened this app on PC.. didnt use/login PC for more than 6 months.
got shocked seeing lost when i see my untouch, offline wallet in lst 6months...
SOS #electrum wallet cheat or #howcome these threat?

how will you kindly help to resolve?

[wtoung]

please help restore my stolen fund due to electrum wallet which i didn't open for months.
shocking to see my small lost from a PC, which i didn't touch for months.

or is that electrum itself steal our funding !! sorry, i may not know culture of dev team, but want to trust electrum developers are smart, good and honest people.

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/bb08b3ed52955da3c98562638e5d1486328995e029f8b33ce35320deeddcd0b3

any clue restoring? Thanks.

[ValdikSS]

To clarify what has happened to non-tech-savvy people.

Electrum is a "lite" Bitcoin wallet, which does not download full blockchain and keep it locally, but relies on a servers with full blockchain. Such servers may be set up and operated by anyone, including me and you, and they would be automatically used in Electrum.
When you send money, if the transaction can't be performed, server may respond with text error message with the reason of that.

During last month, some malicious servers appear, which do not accept money transactions and only return bogus error message. This error message states that your client is outdated and you should download a new, updated one. This "updated" client is not an official Electrum client but one provided by a hacker (by this server operator), designed to stole your money and probably to perform further malicious activity on your computer (e.g. stole your browser passwords and other private data). It's uploaded to the website unrelated to Electrum official website or github page, but it is designed to look very close to original one, to fool you to download the file and install it.
Unfortunately, you've installed such client, and now you lost your money. There's no way to return your money. Electrum developers have nothing to do with this malicious "updated" versions. Official Electrum page https://electrum.org/ have the following text on top:

Warning: Versions of Electrum older than 3.3.3 are vulnerable to a phishing attack, where malicious servers are able to display a message asking users to download a fake version of Electrum. Do not download software updates from another source than electrum.org. In order to reach users of vulnerable versions, we have started to use the same vulnerability, and to direct them to electrum.org.

Just to be clear, once again: you've installed a virus instead of original Electrum client, uninstall it or better, reinstall the whole operating system because nobody has investigated if the virus perform other actions other than money stealing. And you can't return your money since it Bitcoin, a system built without any party which should be trusted, like banks. You can only monitor further transactions from the address where your money go, and try to determine the person behind that.

[birdie-github]

The developers of this app cannot help you, and there's no support - it's an open source, non-profit application. Most likely your money is permanently gone.

If you still have enough money you could hire an investigator though I highly doubt he'll ever be able to find the attacker and recover your funds.

[ValdikSS]

@spesmilo, @ecdsa spam ^^^