I Was Hacked for over $1000 in Crypto! - Learn From My Mistake

The worst thing happened to me last night. My computer got hacked! This is the first time something like this has ever happened to me. I couldn't believe it.

In some ways I suppose I deserve what happened to me. I downloaded a torrent of a cracked version of Camtasia, a video editing program. Big mistake! Upon installation I immediately noticed that my computer was infected. Pop ups were opening left and right and and my antivirus program was telling me that it was finding malicious software. I immediately made moves to uninstall everything that was recently added to my computer. I thought I had gotten everything off so I started to calm down and went back to work analyzing the crypto market and deciding which positions to close to get together the Ethereum for the ICO I planned to invest in the next day.

While working away I noticed a notification pop up. It was from my Happycoin wallet saying that a 5800 HPC transaction had been completed. I didn't do that! I immediately checked my wallet and sure enough my wallet had been cleaned out!

Recieving Address: Hcmo4a17ZaBY5GMJgvcMrriTt5PxgC7AQJ
Transaction ID: 83113a586d4fe3ca9b06c3558d9a80ded5611b644c40d16a0cf36d238cca22c9-000

I began to panic and changed the passwords for my other wallets to attempt to keep them safe. I even changed the password for my E-mail address. Though I was very upset I thought the worst was behind me. Then I noticed an E-mail warning me that someone was trying to get into my Gmail account but they had been stopped. The E-mail informed me that the attempt was made from a Russian IP address and that they correctly entered my password. Thank god that wasn't enough for them to gain access.

Just as I thought the worst was behind me and that maybe after this they would just give up another notification popped up this time from my HTML coin wallet informing me that 200,000 HTML had been sent off! I couldn't understand it I had just changed that password. I was livid!

Recieving Address: HcrRQvxiS9W1T7UHmDVQaZAXWFaYeWE4yi
Transaction ID: e5c3a67dfa7be1268d13dd4fd14cd4a2eee1b470bad5c5e5faca9f9c279700ed

I immediately made moves to restore my laptop to a backup from 2 days before. Honestly, this should have been my first move. After this was done my computer appeared to be running much more smoothly. The worst was behind me finally, or so I thought...

Back to work I went, trading my alts for Ethereum and as I went to withdraw from one of my exchanges I noticed that I had been signed out of my Protonmail account. I attempted to enter my password but I was being told my password was incorrect. This is a nightmare!

The hackers must have key-logged the password change I did before restoring my computer. The bastards! I was able to recover my account using my recovery e-mail. When I got inside there where Russian characters everywhere. Yup these hackers are clearly not only using a Russian IP but since they changed my accounts language to Russian it looks like they actually are Russian.

I changed my password and hoped that it was over but wasn't jumping to any conclusions this time. Sure enough they got into my account again and I had to recover it again this time making sure to use my other laptop in case they still had a working key-logger on my Alienware laptop. This time I looked for extra security features and found the two factor authenticator option and turned that on. Certainly they wouldn't be able to get in this time right?

Wrong! Again they got into my Protonmail account and this time they changed the recovery e-mail making it impossible for me to recover my e-mail. I felt so defeated.

I did the only think I could and contacted Protonmail support. They were able to lock my account and after providing some information and e-mailing back and forth they were able to change the recovery e-mail back to mine. I am still messaging them trying to get my account unlocked and when that happens the question is will it ever be secure again? I will be moving all of my cryptocurrency account verification to other e-mails just to be safe.

The moral of this story boys and girls is NEVER torrent on the computer you use for cryptocurrency staking and trading. You may not regret it the first few times you do it, but one day you will open the wrong file and you could lose everything.

Personally I am taking this as a lesson learned. This kind of mistake will never be made by me again. I hope that all of you can learn from my mistake as well and be very careful with your cyber security specially if you own crypto.

Hope you enjoyed my story. Don't forget to Up-vote, Follow and Re-Steem. Spread the word!