A Bitcoin User Claims to Be Hacked After Paying $3 Million Transaction Fee
A Bitcoin user who accidentally paid an $3.1 million transaction fee claims to have been hacked. The transaction fee, worth 83.65 BTC, set a new record for a single Bitcoin transaction fee in U.S. dollars. The victim created a new account and transferred 139 BTC to it, only for it to be immediately transferred out to another wallet. The user suspects that someone was running a script on the wallet with a strange fee calculation.
Transaction Details and Signature Verification
The transaction involved the payment of an 83.65 BTC fee to transfer 55.77 BTC ($2.1 million). The victim’s pre-transaction balance was 139.42 BTC ($5.2 million). The victim signed a message from the Bitcoin address in question to confirm their ownership of the funds that paid the high fee. The signature was verified by Mononaut and Casa co-founder and CTO Jameson Lopp.
Possible Compromised Wallet and Reimbursement
However, Mononaut noted that if the wallet was compromised, the attacker could have also signed the message. The transaction was mined by AntPool, and it is unclear if they would be willing to reimburse the fee like F2Pool did in a similar incident in September.
Theory of Low-Entropy Wallet and Automated Script
Mononaut suggests that the most likely cause of the hack was a low-entropy wallet, making it vulnerable to hacking. The high fee could be explained by multiple attackers competing to steal the funds using scripts configured to hinder competitors.
Hot Take: Reminder on Wallet Security
This incident serves as a reminder not to take shortcuts with wallet entropy and to use multisig for large sums. It highlights the importance of ensuring proper randomness in creating wallets and implementing additional security measures to protect against potential hacks.
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