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    Can someone explain?

    So yesterday I went to check on some BTC cash I had stored for approx the last 8 years.

    0$ balance. Fuck. Someone took it, and along with 5 other wallets, loaded another worth roughly 60k.

    I just want to understand how!

    I made paper wallets 8 years ago on bitaddress.org , and the send key had never been entered… ever. They got my 15k I mined a long time ago as an experiment with some friends.

    I get its gone, I just want to understand how.

    SNT

    Can someone explain?
    byu/snakesntings inBitcoin



    Posted by snakesntings

    View 14 Comments

    14 Comments

    1. __Ken_Adams__ on

      Obviously the private keys were compromised but no one will be able to tell you how. Best you can do is speculate.

    2. riscten on

      Did you generate your keys offline, by downloading the page and running it on an airgapped computer with a fresh OS? Also, are you 100% certain it was the legit [bitaddress.org](http://bitaddress.org) and not one of the countless scam clones?

    3. terp_studios on

      You trusted a website to generate your wallet… that’s what happened. Keys should always be generated offline.

    6. setatakahashi on

      Type the body of this post into chagpt and it will list the probable causes. Compromised at generation tim, weak entropy

    7. filenotfounderror on

      Either you used a fake or malicious website to make the keys or the entropy the website used to make the keys was low and someone brute forced it. Those are the two options, not really some great mystery.

      Low entropy was pretty common for early website i think, probably because there wasn’t really a huge incentive to hack people for 10,000 btc worth $50

    9. DarthBen_in_Chicago on

      Everyone knows you should move your bitcoin daily to ensure it’s still there.

      /s

    10. AgentSmith2077 on

      From 2011 to 2014 bitaddress . org used the BitcoinJS to generate the addresses. This library is/was vulnerable to the RandStorm vulnerability. The keys were not as random as the developers thought they would be.
      [https://www.kaspersky.com.au/blog/vulnerability-in-hot-cryptowallets-from-2011-2015/32975/](https://www.kaspersky.com.au/blog/vulnerability-in-hot-cryptowallets-from-2011-2015/32975/)

      Anyone that created an address using bit address needs to move their coins, or risk losing them.

    11. Hatty_Hats on

      Man, that is rough 😞

      A few common ways this kind of thing can happen, even if you never manually entered the key anywhere:

      If bitaddress.org was used online (not from a downloaded, verified offline copy), there’s always the chance the site, your browser, or your machine was compromised and someone logged/generated the same keys.

      If the paper wallet was ever photographed, scanned, copied on a printer, emailed, backed up to cloud storage, or written in a note app, that’s another potential leak.

      Some early paper-wallet generators and fake clones have been found to use weak/random or even pre-generated keys, so attackers just sit and monitor those addresses and sweep anything that ever hits them.

      Physical compromise is still possible too. Anyone who ever had access to that paper (housemates, movers, cleaners, etc.) could have quietly copied the key and waited.

      None of that gets the BTC back, but it does explain how it can be drained without you ever “using” the key. These days, a hardware wallet + properly backed-up seed is a lot safer than old-school single-key paper wallets.

      Answer generated using Perplexity. Hopefully this helped a little.

    12. coolandy007 on

      Not your keys, not your wallet. Everyone should memorize the moment they get into crypto.

      Now, Is there any way to track the transactions and see when it was moved?

    13. luminairex on

      A block explorer of the public address should show you a transaction history. You can see when you loaded the coins, and when they were swept. You’ll also be able to follow the chain to see where they ended up, to a certain extent.

      Aside from someone simply finding your private key and using it? Compromised browser extension, keylogger, or you didn’t use authentic bitaddress.org (which works offline and makes no network requests). Really old versions had bad random number generation, but 8 years ago would have had the fix to it.

      Also possible your printer leaked it, as documents can be cached in its memory

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