Bitcoin Gold wallet compromised, users may have downloaded malware

It seems that Bitcoin Gold has been dealt more than their share of bad luck recently. The company is still mired in the aftermath of the MyBTGWallet scam, and now they have been hit with another problem that is causing them to issue a critical warning to their customers. Users of Bitcoin Gold (BTG) are facing another cybersecurity issue. The BTG team has earlier revealed that someone has gained access to their Github repository for the project and replaced the compiled Windows file with a different one.

According to a critical warning sent by BTG, the link on the Download page and the file downloads on the Github release page have been serving a suspicious file of unknown origin for approximately four and a half days or approximately 36 hours.

Anyone who downloaded the Bitcoin Gold Wallet for Windows between November 24th, 13:11 UTC and November 25th, 2017, 22:30 UTC is at risk of a malware infection, BTG developers announced on the coin’s official site, BitcoinGold.org.

The file does not trigger antivirus/anti-malware software, however, in an abundance of caution, BTG is presuming that the file is of malicious intent to steal user information and/or cryptocurrency. The developers are still analysing the file.

The BTG warning explains: “Until we know otherwise, all users should presume this file was created with malicious intent – to steal cryptocurrencies and/or user information. The file does not trigger antivirus / anti-malware software, but do not presume the file is safe.”

The team adds that: “If the file was used, the computer on which it was used should be addressed with extreme caution; the file should be deleted, the machine should be thoroughly checked for malware and viruses (or wiped clean), and any cryptocurrencies with wallets accessible on that machine should be moved to new wallet addresses immediately.”

It’s the second BTG-related swindle in the past week — just days ago, a site claiming to generate BTG wallets for users who submitted their private keys instead stole the balances, netting over $3 million USD in various digital assets.