As most of you know, my MetaMask crypto wallet was hacked on Sunday morning and drained of $400 worth of ETH. In the chronicle, which you can read here, I logged how quickly dozens of bots responded to my social media pleas for help. The content (from obvious bots or hackers with good social listening tools) generally pointed me to Instagram accounts or linked me to people who could “help me” get my crypto back. This was all obvious nonsense.
This morning, I did my regularly scheduled Tuesday morning segment on Fox 5’s Good Day NY, and (as usual) I tweeted about my appearance and the topic. I thought there were a lot of bots on Sunday, but I was unprepared for the number of bots that responded this morning. Hackers looking to feed off of other hackers’ carrion. Unsurprising, but no less disgusting.
On a happier note, thanks to some quick introductions, I was able to spend an hour on the phone yesterday with senior management at MetaMask, and we walked through the most likely attack vectors. We were unable to figure out how the hacker got my funds, but I did get an exceptional education about MetaMask, how bad actors exploit newbees (and wizened warriors), best practices for using MetaMask in combination with hardware wallets, and much more, all of which I will share in an upcoming blog post.
Bottom line: do not fear MetaMask or crypto. Instead, understand that we live in a dangerous world.
Author’s note: This is not a sponsored post. I am the author of this article and it expresses my own opinions. I am not, nor is my company, receiving compensation for it.