FTX has been hacked
Yesterday morning I woke up with bad news: Kroll, the security company that’s managing the bankruptcy process of FTX was hacked and the personal information of all users was stolen and leaked. “It’s almost not a big deal”, I tell myself, I didn’t provide the phone number and used a completely dedicated e-mail; so, once, it was all over I would just delete it.
However, I did not consider what might happen during the process. Just as a friend was asking me at the beach, “but then how did that crypto scam work out for you?” I get an e-mail “Your FTX funds are now available for withdrawal”
Whoa! Talk about coincidence!
However, the thing that doesn’t add up and makes it all strange to me is the content of the email: they return me the dollar value that was present when the platform was closed. This doesn’t make sense because I had a lot of shitcoins like Terra and Luna that the 3commas bot had bought with the intention to sell back shortly and paying them today at last year’s price would cost them a lot of money!
I look at the sender: it’s from [email protected]… uhm…. a very generic and suspicious address…
I see the link: ftxuser315909.s3.amazonaws.com/FTXassetsWithdrawal.html: an Amazon Web Services S3 bucket? … um, impossible…
Disappointment goes up … it’s a scam for sure. I open it and indeed a redirect is made to withdrawals-ftx.com. Without much explanation it is asked to connect the MetaMask wallet: this way they can withdraw from the account, instead of deposit to it…
Honestly, this is why I have never created a wallet with MetaMask and the like, to me this “web3” concept where one logs in to a website giving full access to the wallet with all the savings seems absurd. Can you imagine if to enter a store one had to give the wallet into the hands of the shopkeeper placing complete trust on his honesty?
Moreover, the browser is the most insecure component of a computer, and keeping all your savings in an easily hackable extension is the equivalent of walking around a city with 500 dollars in cash in your hand. Today you’re lucky and nothing happens, but sooner or later someone else is going to have that cash on hand…