Categories: PSA

Localbitcons Support Livechat compromised

Localbitcoins is a P2P platform similar to craigslist which is used to connect bitcoin buyers and sellers. It has come to our attention that the support live chat has been compromised by an unknown hacker. The perpetrator posted malicious links that downloaded infected executables such as keyloggers and similar software designed to steal your information, or bitcoins.

Here is Localbitcoin’s official response:

As you might be aware, the livechat accounts used by localbitcoins.com were compromised. Within those chats the impostor provided links to download executables, which probably had key loggers or other malicious software. If you had a chat with the support within last 3 hours, please do not open it, click any links or download anything provided by the support on the chat.

We are now investigating the magnitude of this case, and will be in touch with the users who might have been affected by this as soon as possible.

What happened

The extent of the hack did not seem terrible. All in all an estimated of 17 BTC were stolen which were then refunded to the 3 hacked customers. A similar incident happened last year when a hacker gained access to localbitcoins databases for a short while.

One factor that might have contributed to the loss of coins was the lack of 2 factor authentication for the withdrawal. However, the hacker could have sent malicious phishing links and could have asked the users to login to their email. One fact to note is that the attack was identified very quickly and was fixed before any real damage happened. Kudos to localbitcoins staff for having such tight security.

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Mark Arguinbaev

I'm a 29 year old cryptocurrency entrepreneur. I was introduced to Bitcoin in 2013 and have been involved with it ever since. Fun Fact: I mined cryptocurrency using my college dorm room's free electricity.