A friend came to visit Saturday, and by the time I walked with her to catch a taxi, and rode the bicycle home, it was almost 12 am. I planned to quickly check the token I'd bought a few days earlier which is bound to break out one of these days (actually, meanwhile it did but more about that in another post), and then try to get at least a start on writing a post here. However, this plan fell to shreds when I opened my Metamask wallet...

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A Sick Joke

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When I checked the wallet, my ETH wallet was quite empty but it didn't quite concern me because I didn't have more than a few dollars in it.
But when I checked the token that I'd bought, there wasn't anything there.
For a moment, I thought that my Metamask wallet was playing up so I shut it down, refreshed the page, and tried again. Nothing.

By that time, my heart started skipping a beat but I wasn't really too worried yet. Not yet!
It must have been some mistake, or Metamask not working properly.
I decided to check my other two wallets, on different browsers.
One was fine. The other: empty.

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At this point, I was sweating it quite a bit but still, I thought it could be an issue with Metamask because the third wallet was fine.
But then I went to EtherScan and my nightmares became reality.
About 24 hours earlier, my funds had been moved to a, to me unknown, address.
I checked the second wallet: the same thing. Funds were removed to the same wallet address.
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My wallets had been hacked!

Source

At first 'all' that was gone was around $350 from two accounts. This was mainly a tiny amount of ETH, another token I'd had for years that wasn't worth much, and ALL of my new tokens, plus $100 that didn't even belong to me but was sent to me by a friend who didn't know how to buy through Uniswap yet, and wanted to get that same token.
The token has gone up big time, and right now, the total value of that would lie around $800 USD, at least.

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The asshole thief (thieves) had sold it all, and moved the swapped ETH to yet another account.
However, the more I searched their wallet address, the more shit I found. My heart was about to pump out of my chest when I checked my OpenSea account and saw that they'd also taken my one and only NFT there. A Golden Bull by Elliotrades, that I had bought more than 18 months ago. I bought this together with my daughter and @camthecreator. We each paid an equal share of the 0.25 ETH it cost at that time (at the time this was $450). The highest bid I'd ever had for it was around 3 ETH (6k in USD) and we didn't take it back then because we knew it would be worth more eventually. He/they sold it for the bottom price...
I felt sick...
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Then I realized that, of course, my Ether wallet address would be the same as other coin addresses, so I checked those: All gone. These were small amounts, around $100 in total but still. They even took my CUB and PolyCub. SCUMBAGS!
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What to do?

There's nothing really to be done. All I could do was protect my PC from further attacks, which I did right away.
Then I got in touch with Metamask but it's very hard, if not impossible, to get in touch with support there.
There is the community but that's not much help either.
When you read their info, there's really nothing they can do. I am not saying that things should be centralized, but maybe it would be great if there was extra protection so it's harder for thieves to steal from you in Metamask.
The extra protection can be through a hardware wallet. So I decided to connect my Ledger. However, somehow it won't connect, and...well, with basically no support present, there's not much to do.
Having to put in a code that is sent to an email address would solve a lot of issues in my opinion. You can still stay anonymous with that.

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OpenSea is a bit of a different story.
The thieves transferred the NFT (that I had kept, and never sold for more than a year...) to their own account. They then moved it to yet another account. The first account was unknown, and the second one was. They then sold it to the lowest bidder. You'd say that if it's a known account, they can do something, right?
Nope, wrong.
This is what OpenSea told me: They put a hold on the NFT.
So the buyer of the NFT now has a label on the NFT saying that it's under investigation for fraud. Nice one, right?
If I was that buyer, I wouldn't be a happy camper. However, when I buy an NFT, I track its history. And when I see that someone who was holding it for over a year and never took any of the offers on it, now transfers the thing for free to another account, and it's then transferred again, and then sold to me for the lowest price...I'd scratch my head and probably wouldn't buy it. However great of a deal it seems to be. So to be honest: This guy deserves the NFT to be on hold.
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But here is the rest: I now had to either file a report at the local police station (uhuh, here in Mexico...not happening) OR with the FBI Cyber Crime Unit. Yes, you've read that right!
Then, and only then, will OpenSea keep the NFT locked for further sale on their platform. However, the owner is free to sell it elsewhere... Nice, right?
In other words, I have no rights. It's gone. And anything I do doesn't do me any good.

I did file the report, with all the information I have on the thieves. All their wallet addresses, and everything else they've done. Not only to me but to everyone else they stole from. And believe me, there are a few. I could see 10s of thousands a month roll from others into their accounts.

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How did this happen?

To be honest, I am not 100% sure. I installed the program Malwarebytes, and it turned out that I had a Trojan on my computer named dark comet remote access trojan.
What this does is, it gathers information from all your actions and everything on your computer. Everything.
It takes snapshots, and this is how the thieves were able to do their thing.

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There are a few options as to why it happened to me.
Now, in the 7 years that I've been in the crypto world, this is the very first time.
A while back, my daughter had someone take over my computer, via team viewer remote access. I told her I didn't want this, but it happened anyway. I have very strong suspicions that this was the thief. About 60%.
However, it could have been a different way, I don't know.
Then yesterday, I clicked on two different Listnerds mails, and BOTH were blocked containing a trojan. So, unfortunately, we have fellow Hivers here who are scammers. It sucks but it's true. Be warned!

But the harsh reality is that you can click a link, any link, and this can open the world (your computer) to thieves.

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What to do to prevent theft

In all honesty, you will never be 100% safe in the crypto space, or anywhere really.
Personally, I never have all my funds in one wallet. Well, this time, almost all of it was in three wallets, and most of it is gone now...

I installed the malware app to detect any malware.
Then I proceeded to copy all the docs and photos I had on my PC, after checking them all manually first...
They can even hide malware in a photo...so yeah. Check the damn things.

I wiped my computer and installed Linux. I should have done this before but didn't because it would cost me my warranty. Well, now it cost me more than what the computer is worth so that was stupid.

For Metamask, you can connect a hardware wallet. This way, every transaction has to be approved there, making it much, much harder for thieves to get to your funds. With the ledger, there seems to be an issue but I will keep trying until it connects. I don't trust Metamask alone now.

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I've learned a very hard, expensive lesson. The money I stuck in those tokens was there so I could turn it into more, to pay my rent. It's gone now, and so is my rent money. I already didn't have it haha.
The NFT was for when the markets would pick up, and I could sell it for at least around 9k, so each of us would have a nice chunk of money to do other things with. That's gone now. So yeah, all together, right now it seems like the thieves took a little over $1000. But in reality, they took a lot more. It sucks. There's nothing I can do about it.
Trust me, I cried some tears and felt really sorry for myself these past few days...

I just hope that one day, these thieves will be stopped and that the karma train will hit (another hacker taking them on maybe? 😆). I wish I could be there to see it happen. But that's wishful thinking...

It could have been so much worse. And at least, with cybercrime, there's no physical harm.
We live close to one of the poorest areas in Playa, and when you see how people live, it's easy to see that things are not that bad for us. These people live in such poverty every day! Whenever I feel down, I always try to keep reminding myself of that.

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The Silver Lining

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Sunday, my youngest son and I went to the nearest local shop to get a few things with the last money that I had. I really only had about 25 bucks that would have to last until today.
We're already living on a desperately low income, so this was just another setback that I didn't need.

We got a few basic things from the shop that we needed to get through the next few days. I can get really inventive. Shopping for less than 50 dollars a week, even here in Mexico, brings challenges but it's a challenge I have taken before, and it can be interesting at times. I'll ride the bicycle all the way across town if I have to if that's where oranges are 3 pesos cheaper a kilo...To be honest, with the prices I've found here, it suddenly becomes way more appealing to become a fruitarian...

Anyway, as we left the shop, I remembered something.
In the past, I've been through some seriously rough patches.
However, I've never been in such a situation with my kids before. Yes, we've had moments like it in Ireland but never as bad as this. However, in the past, whenever I felt like I had managed to get myself into such a mess that I didn't have more than just a few dollars left, I'd always do one thing: I'd buy myself a good meal. With nothing left to lose (financially), why not? That's the least one can do for themselves. And somehow whenever I did this, things would always get better soon after...

So this time, I thought I'd do the same. I spent 190 pesos (less than 10 dollars) out of the 400 pesos that I had left on street food for me and my kids. I even threw in some fruit juice. Now, mind you, we had enough food in the house to get us through a few days. When we got home with the food, my daughter asked why I spent this money on street food. I replied with exactly what I wrote above. And said that we deserved that much, as we'd been living off the bare minimum for such a long time now.
It'd get better. I believed it, and that's when it will get better.

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But the food wasn't the silver lining I wanted to mention.
When we got to the food stall, there were two men standing next to us. They greeted us, and one got chatting with my 8-year-old son. He was telling him about the menu.
He then asked us if we needed help ordering but I declined. I want to practice my Spanish so every little helps...
The man that had been talking to my son then introduced his friend and told us that his friend's wife was going to start a group, with some friends, to practice English with each other. He suggested I'd join and that way I could practice Spanish with them, while they practiced their English.
A win-win situation.
I knew instinctively that these two were genuine and just tried to be friendly. So I eagerly agreed and we exchanged phone numbers.
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You never know

This action, of us, getting the food, brought us one step closer to actually learning the language better, and to making new friends.

Behind every dark cloud, there is always a silver lining.