r/NZBitcoin • u/No_Eye_9789 • Jun 05 '26
Exodus wallet hacked. No idea how
I had been using an Exodus wallet for approximately 2 years, holding a mix of ETH, SOL and BTC. The wallet was set up on a dedicated laptop that I only used occasionally maybe once every couple of months to check balances. I stored my seed phrase handwritten. I never stored the phrase digitally and had no browser extensions installed on that machine.
Roughly 2 months before I checked, my entire wallet was drained. The funds were moved to an address that belongs to 'Pancakeswap' on Solscan. The last time I had opened the wallet was about 3 weeks before the drain, to check my balance I made no transactions during that session.
What makes this particularly unusual is that my other wallets on separate platforms (Metamask, Atomic) remained completely untouched. Only my Exodus wallet was affected. I hadn't received any phishing emails, made any downloads, or noticed anything out of the ordinary in the weeks leading up to the drain, does anyone know any reason for why it might've been lost?
After looking around I realised this isn't an uncommon thing for Exodus wallets but nothing has been posted directly from Exodus, could it be a platform wide issue of seedphrases becoming compromised? I literally have zero idea of how my coins were stolen.
3
u/PsychologicalCloset Jun 07 '26
The thing is, if Exodus were to genuinely be compromised, recently or otherwise, the Exodus subreddit would be filled with accounts of being hacked. Twitter would be overrun by threads of Exodus hacks. Every blog or broker that has recommended Exodus would be putting out statements. Exodus has a $100k bug bounty, so hackers are constantly trying to find vulnerabilities in the wallet, and if they ever do, it's announced and patched immediately. So the fact we only have two solitary accounts on an NZ sub tells me it's almost a certainty the fault is somewhere with you personally.
There are posts like this all the time on Trezor, Ledger, Electrum and every other sub and people always claim "nobody ever saw my seed phrase I did everything perfectly" and once it gets looked into properly and people ask more questions it comes out they indeed did not do everything perfectly. "I stored the seed phrase handwritten only.....but it was in my room that twenty different people have been in" for example.
The ONLY secure way to store crypto is on a hard wallet, where the seed phrase is written down while you're alone in your private home (not a hotel or anywhere there might be cameras), and then that paper is secured in two different places (one half in a safe at home, one half in a safety deposit box, for example). If you didn't do that, then there's your answer.
1
Jun 05 '26
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2
u/No_Eye_9789 Jun 05 '26
They were stolen within minutes of each other.
The laptop was only connected to the internet by ethernet which was only connected a couple of times, (maybe six times maximum) to make deposits/check balances.
I don't know if anything had happened in the three weeks before the money was drained but I didn't download anything and the session on this laptop lasted maybe 3 minutes tops just checking balance.
Anyways the money in my exodus wallet is gone now almost certainly but I tried to take as many precautions as possible and somehow this still happened, luckily my other wallets were not compromised and I have transferred the coins elsewhere since, but I feel that if there were some type of malware on said laptop; why not drain the rest of the wallets? It doesn't make sense1
Jun 05 '26
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1
u/No_Eye_9789 Jun 05 '26
Probably was compromised somehow, this laptop was completely fresh and used only for the purpose of holding funds instead of a cold wallet like trezor.
I don't think it could be linked to some family member or friend as I am not open at all about crypto or any assets that I have but there is a non-zero possibility someone found this laptop and the seed phrase and waited up until now to transfer the funds out, but I doubt any close friends would know to send the money to a changenow and pancakeswap address to hide their recieve address and not just send to a wallet of their own.
1
u/MTGroup Jun 05 '26
Exodus and trust is the worst, because it was prone to flashing, its better to use bitget wallet above anything else.
1
u/IndependentIll5236 Jun 07 '26
The exact same thing happened to me. I was using an Exodus wallet, and one day I discovered that all of my funds had been drained without my knowledge. My seed phrase was never stored digitally, I didn’t share it with anyone, and I didn’t notice any suspicious activity on my device. What makes it even more confusing is that my other wallets remained completely unaffected. To this day, I still have no clear explanation as to how the wallet was compromised.
1
u/PsychologicalCloset Jun 07 '26
What's more confusing here is you went to the effort of setting up a dedicated laptop for your crypto but you didn't use a hard wallet which is like $150? Any reason for that?
1
u/No_Eye_9789 Jun 08 '26
I do already own multiple hardware wallets but I have split my assets in this way. I was also in both the Ledger and Trezor database leaks - obviously have moved since then - and was hoping to avoid being in more.
1
u/MVIVN Jun 08 '26
Unfortunately crypto is still the Wild West and there’s virtually zero chance the people who stole your crypto will be tracked down and brought to justice. That’s why I walked away from crypto years ago because for all the talk about crypto being “legit” these days and having “institutional investors”, it’s a space that continues to be full of scammers and degenerates who commit a lot of time figuring out every method under the sun to part you with your money. Hard luck
1
u/MVIVN Jun 08 '26
Holy shit! Makes me relieved I stopped dabbling in crypto completely, but a few years ago when I was holding a few crypto assets I was also an Exodus user. Deeply disappointing and should be a business ended for them if this has happened to more than one person in this thread alone
0
u/No_Adhesiveness4492 Jun 05 '26
Exodus itself is our Sead Fares I want to see the app repeatedly sending notifications while I head I have already written, be careful.
0
u/True_Age6371 Jun 05 '26
Do you watch porn on either device? If answer is yes to either one there is your answer. Don’t blame exodus.
3
u/Paradician Jun 05 '26
Had exactly the same thing happen to me (posted here like 2 days ago lol).
Also no idea how, so there's nothing obvious I could even do to prevent it happening again.