On July 12, a distraught crypto holder posted to Reddit that not only had they kept an especially large amount of money in their MetaMask wallet — s

White hat hacker saves $117,000 in crypto from MetaMask phishing attack

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2021-07-18 15:30:03

On July 12, a distraught crypto holder posted to Reddit that not only had they kept an especially large amount of money in their MetaMask wallet — some $240,000 — but that they had been phished and given access to a scammer, who was draining their funds. The Redditor invited other users of the popular forum to join them in watching their account get emptied.

The post received arguably justified criticisms of keeping so much money in an in-browser wallet (typically more risky than a hardware wallet kept offline) along with users shaking their heads over the idea of giving out access to these funds to an unusually helpful, supposed technical support assistant. 

It turned out this method would end up saving about half the funds, or some $117,000, and take them out of the reach of the scammer. Here’s how it happened.

On the other end of the form are a few white hat hackers that say they “are happy to help out distressed individuals.” It’s an ad hoc service, where developers may choose to respond to requests if they’re available.

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