Electrum Wallet Bogus Upgrade Notice

[wry]

In the latest turn of events the bad guys have been able to insert a bogus "update" notice into the official Electrum client by using a malaicious server.

If you are an Electrum user (like I am) IGNORE any messages you receive from your client and do not use links in them.

Personally, I'm shocked the official client can be hijacked like this.

The official Electrum web page is: https://electrum.org/

Bitcointalk Thread about this issue:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5089963.0

Additional Bitcointalk Thread:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5090097.0

[williamshennie9]

Do people still fall for this stuff? I mean I got scammed from a fake bank email in 2009, and I've been cautious ever since. Hard to believe that the same tactics are still used today, and that scammers are still able to make money from unaware people. Oh well, it must be profitable for them to do these kind of scams, which is so sad to see

[wry]

13 minutes ago, williamshennie9 said:

Do people still fall for this stuff? I mean I got scammed from a fake bank email in 2009, and I've been cautious ever since. Hard to believe that the same tactics are still used today, and that scammers are still able to make money from unaware people. Oh well, it must be profitable for them to do these kind of scams, which is so sad to see

People fell for it because it wasn't some outside notice, it was a notice from INSIDE the client itself.  So it looked very legitimate, hence why it's news and not just "people are still falling for phishing attacks."  Between 15 and 250 BTC lost to it already.

[wry]

As an update to this one, as Electrum is a fairly popular light wallet client.  However, starting yesterday (15 March 2019) clients older than 3.3 will no longer be able to connect to public servers.  You need to upgrade your client.

You can read about it on Bitcointalk:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5120865.0

Or their twitter: 

Not real excited about this heavy handed approach, but oh well.

[Kate]

Sad to see that phishing scam is now one of the most used ways for scammers to scam the crypto users. The unavailability to connect to public servers on old clients is a good idea so they have to force update the client. 

[cryptjh]

Electrum is still one of my favorites wallet to hold my Bitcoins, the team behind are fast to send out information if they know about any security issued with the wallet. However after I got myself a Ledger hardware wallet I haven't really used my Electrum, but I still have some funds there, as I like to have my coins split up in more than one wallet.

[KiXxnTRiXx]

this is the reason why i never click links that i do not know or suspect that is bogus.. this is the most common thing nowadays for hackers to gain information about you or worst, get control of your accounts.. when suddenly you need to click a link when you usually dont and no notice about such thing occuring should be a red flag.. aswell as unusual behavior from the site or company.. like here where i am, one of the company i deal with even says on their site that they will never send texts or emails asking for personal informations ever.. then i got a text asking me to click a link because something wrong with my account.. lol,, bogus.. or a link saying free money.. anything that seems too good to be true coming out of the blue, usually is scam..