Man Loses Life Savings in Latest Ethereum MetaMask Hack

Yerevan (CoinChapter.com) — A Reddit user claims he woke up to find his MetaMask (crypto-wallet on Ethereum blockchain) wallet empty. The $60,000 worth of savings he locked in Ether (ETH) were stolen.

He then asked the Reddit community for help, posting his wallet address, along with a link to trace the transfer and the final deposit. The MetaMask client was able to trace the transaction back to an Exchange named FixedFloat, which did not lead to further traces.

MetaMask Hacked Due To LimiSwap?

The alleged theft victim claims he had downloaded a software LimitSwap, four days before the hack. The software would enable him to purchase a new token at the moment the listing comes out. He got suspicious after the system required him to provide his private key to make the trade. But he trusted other users who assured him it wasn’t out of the ordinary.

However, the hack occurred not long after inputting the private key. Whether the hack was a result of LimitSwap’s misconduct is not yet clear.

Crypto-crime

The latest hack followed several other reports of hacked MetaMask accounts when perpetrators transferred stolen Ethereum to separate “dump” wallets. Another victim claims a culprit stole his assets through hacking his google sessions.

In 2020, as the world economy was facing a crisis due to the pandemic, more investment flocked to the crypto assets. However, the increasing turnover of digital exchanges made way to a growing number of hacks and scams. According to Security Magazine, theft cases add up to $1.9 billion stolen in 2020 alone.

As the crypto-market expands, surpassing $2 trillion in 2021, it is gradually becoming increasingly mainstream. The data for the year 2021 is still inconclusive. However, the charts show a gradual decrease in the overall criminal activity in the crypto-market since the year 2019.

Crypto-market cap at $2 trillion. Source TOTAL on TradingView,com

All of the theft victims mentioned warned the rest of the crypto-community to never reveal private keys to any third party. The private key is a type of cryptography algorithm that allows the holder of the key to access their tokens. Any digital wallet, like MetaMask, has the objective to keep those tokens safe. However, the likelihood of a hack increases, if the user shares their private key.

The victim of the latest hack confirms, that the theft was a “very expensive lesson” for him.

Photo by Emil Kalibradov on Unsplash

CoinChapter has reached out to LimitSwap for further detail on the case, but has received no reply as of the moment of writing.