Severed Fingers and 'Wrench Attacks' Rattle the Crypto Elite

https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/crypto-industry-robberies-attacks-32c2867a

47•spenvo•2h ago

Comments

TheKidCoder•2h ago

This is one of those stories that has the elements of a pessimistic view of cryptocurrency and it’s pitfalls but by the end of it makes you stop and think to yourself “Bad people want money, they will do horrible things to get it, that has always been true.”

Flashing your wealth on social media or being a high profile executive is dangerous, crypto-ties or not.

jsheard•2h ago

As usual it's not so much that the scams and attacks are unique to crypto, it's that crypto makes them much worse by willfully ignoring hard-earned lessons in traditional finance. Kidnapping for ransom isn't new, but what is new is that if you kidnap a known crypto whale you can instantly, untraceably and irreversibly extract most of their net worth with a bit of "convincing", without raising any alarms until it's too late.

WalterBright•2h ago

Couldn't one's crypto pile be divided into multiple wallets, each with different passwords?

AnimalMuppet•1h ago

Sure. But if I know about how much you've got, then if I've got you, I can beat all the passwords out of you.

Worse: Even if you give me all your passwords, I may want to keep beating until I'm really sure that you're not holding anything back.

kev009•1h ago

If you have enough to worry about someone beating out of you, maybe putting some into professional multiparty custodial systems and/or one or more cold wallets with trustees is a good idea. This idea scales fine with geopolitical risk.

Your "hot wallet" should be like cash, no more than you are prepared to lose/surrender at once.

PostOnce•1h ago

Or you could just have real money in an insured bank

And your cold wallet could be the stock market or real estate or private equity

Then you're much safer and just as wealthy

1659447091•16m ago

And to add: Your "hot wallet" being bank issued credit cards for everyday purchases or emergencies that you are prepared to lose/surrender the moment someone tells you to hand over your wallet.

Later log into the accounts, flip the toggle to stolen/lost and mark unauthorized purchases if there are any. Then sleep peacefully knowing new credit cards are in the mail and you are only out the cost of the physical wallet holding the cards that were stolen.

vkou•45m ago

> maybe putting some into professional multiparty custodial systems and/or one or more cold wallets with trustees is a good idea.

So, you want to delegate your ability to spend your money to other people.

Why not just go to a bank? It can do that for you, plus pay you interest.

Animats•1h ago

> it's that crypto makes them much worse by ignoring hard-earned lessons in traditional finance.

Indeed. A friend of mine manages a retail bank branch for a major US bank. She gets a few cases a week where someone appears to be a scam victim or is being coerced in some way. They want to make an unusually big cash withdrawal for their account history, or do an unusual money transfer, or something involving gift cards. She's seen all the standard scams by now, and is experienced in explaining what's going on to the victims. Often she can talk them down, or help them. Sometimes even get previously scammed money back.

A surprisingly large part of retail finance work is dealing with fraud and fixing problems. The routine transactions have been automated for years, after all. Crypto land lacks this.

Here's a bank's guide to current scams.[1]

[1] https://www.firstcitizens.com/personal/insights/security/top...

DennisP•29m ago

This is why some crypto people have most of their coin in multisig wallets. They can only transfer small amounts without getting m-of-n friends to sign their transaction. If your friends know not to do that without hearing a code word, then the alarm will be raised.

appreciatorBus•2h ago

Yes tho there is also the element of crypto ppl rediscovering the risks of decentralized & physical stores of value.

nkrisc•2h ago

Of course, but before cryptocurrency a mugger couldn't drain your investment accounts.

bdangubic•2h ago

yea, for sure that was super easy thing to do /s

OutOfHere•2h ago

They still can't if one doesn't advertise them, doesn't have them obviously visible on the phone, and the criminals don't find out about them.

Aurornis•2h ago

> Flashing your wealth on social media or being a high profile executive is dangerous, crypto-ties or not.

Having your wealth held in a form that can be instantly, irreversibly transferred in a way that can be done anonymously by skilled individuals is an added risk.

Some of the same features that people celebrate about crypto make it uniquely advantageous to people looking to execute these attacks.

Yes, we know that in theory attackers could go after some random high profile person and force them to go through bank transfers and then go through all of the additional steps of washing that money through international banks in a way that hopefully cleans their trail sufficiently.

But anyone planning an attack like that would be drawn to a target that already has their money held in a digitally transferable format that is infinitely easier to launder using the modern array of cryptocurrency tools.

ChrisMarshallNY•1h ago

> Flashing your wealth on social media or being a high profile executive is dangerous, crypto-ties or not.

Ask Kim Kardashian about that. I don't think she had anything to do with crypto.

WarOnPrivacy•2h ago

https://archive.is/PJTZP

lsllc•2h ago

Another example of Randall Munroe's prescience:

https://xkcd.com/538/

Although this is the one I'm really worried about:

https://www.xkcd.com/2203/

OutOfHere•1h ago

Just don't flaunt your crypto, and don't have any visible crypto apps or widgets on your phone either. Whether you are rich or poor, don't look particularly rich. Also, if you hold an ETF like IBIT, that's traditional.

john2x•1h ago

If cryptobros didn't flaunt their wealth, crypto wouldn't have been where it is now. Flaunting is part of the spec.

neilv•45m ago

> Those concerns intensified this week with cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase disclosing that as many as 97,000 customers have had their personal information stolen, including addresses and balance snapshots.

I'm not a professional journalist, but let me give it a shot:

"Those concerns intensified this week, with the disclosure that criminals stole from cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase the personal information of as many as 97,000 customers, including cryptocurrency balances and physical addresses."

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