Hello everybody!
I hope you are all doing wonderfully and doing what you love to do best. I have many many days of catching up to do and I will devote some time to this every day from now on.
For today, I logged in to quickly bring to your notice and warn all of you who are into crypto investing and trading of something that's of paramount importance. Security for your digital coins!
I just came across a shocking and unfortunate report of a well known twitter personality's desktop wallet and bittrex account being hacked and all his coins stolen. Yes, ALL! Imagine discovering that 2/3rds of earnings have all disappeared in one sec. Only the part in cold storage is safe.
I believe daytradenik has been trading for a long time and has quite a following. And going by the comments, there are many who have him to thank for their crypto success and learning. He left no lapses in securing his crypto, so please no fingers to be pointed or questions asked about 2FA, email, api keys or wallets. And if anyone can help, that'll be great.
In the last two weeks, I've come across two other reports also that BTC had been stolen from them. The digital scene is getting scarier. Not sure how it is that people are able to hack into other's hard earned money and make it their own. And not sure what level of security is needed to be safe. Is cold storage the only option? How good are paper wallets? I'm aware that it is most important to have 2FA with Google Authenticator enabled and that people should use different email accounts and be uber careful about their passwords uniqueness especially when trading on exchanges. Anything else one can do?
Be informed. Be safe. And good luck!
UPDATE: Nik seems to have kept a manual copy of his 2FA on his computer. That and/or keylogging and remote access could have been how the hackers got his info.
UPDATE 2: Apparently Google Authenticator's 2FA is hackable. A safer option is U2F. But, it is not available on Bittrex at the moment.
UPDATE 3: Yet another case of hacking. This was the outcome of logging into a phishing site which looked like the real thing. Please read the comments too. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/731pdk/6btc_stolen_from_my_bittrex_account_even_my/