NFT: What to Do After Suspecting Your Crypto Wallet Has Been Hacked

CoinWorld reports:

After noticing abnormalities in your crypto wallet, the most important step is not to immediately trace the identity of the attacker, but to quickly assess what permissions they have gained and to prevent further losses. Coinpaper points out that the risks associated with visiting phishing sites, connecting wallets, signing malicious messages, authorizing token expenditures, and leaking mnemonic phrases or private keys vary in severity.

Check On-Chain Records First

If you suspect your wallet has been compromised, the first step is to stop interacting with any suspicious websites or applications and refrain from signing any transactions, messages, or authorization requests. You can then check the wallet address on a block explorer to confirm whether there are any unfamiliar transfers, token movements, contract interactions, or authorization records.

For EVM wallets, the token authorization status is particularly critical. Even if the user has left the related website, malicious contracts may still retain the authority to spend tokens. Revoking authorization can remove this permission, but this is only effective if the issue is limited to the authorization level and not the private key level.

• Check for any unfamiliar outgoing transactions
• Check for any abnormal token authorizations
• Check for interactions with unknown contracts

Connecting a Wallet Does Not Mean Giving Up Your Private Key

The article notes that many users confuse "visiting a malicious website" with "the wallet being controlled." Typically, simply opening a phishing site does not directly lead to the assets in a self-custody wallet being transferred away. Most wallet draining attacks still require further actions from the user, such as connecting the wallet, signing messages, approving token authorizations, or directly leaking the mnemonic phrase.

Similarly, connecting a wallet does not equate to handing over the private key. Once connected, the website can usually only read the public address and request the user to sign or initiate transactions. If the user has only connected the wallet without signing anything further, they can usually disconnect from that DApp and check for any authorization records left behind.

Mnemonic Phrase Leaks Require Creating a New Wallet

If the user has signed a malicious transaction or message, the risk significantly increases. A signature is essentially an encrypted authorization sent from the wallet, which may directly allow asset transfers, NFT movements, or grant further operational permissions to a contract. Some off-chain signatures may seem harmless but can also be exploited by attackers for subsequent asset theft.

If the mnemonic phrase or private key has been exposed, simply changing the wallet password, disconnecting from the website, or revoking a token authorization usually does not resolve the issue. The person who possesses these credentials can independently initiate transactions, and the old wallet is no longer trustworthy.

In such cases, a more prudent approach is to create a brand new wallet using a clean device and generate a new mnemonic phrase, rather than continuing to create new accounts under the original mnemonic phrase. If remaining assets can still be safely transferred, prioritize migrating high-value, transferable assets.

Additional Information: The article also warns that if you suspect your device is infected with malware, such as clipboard hijackers, keyloggers, or credential-stealing programs, you should not continue to operate important wallets on the same device; if the address has been monitored by "sweeping bots," newly transferred funds may also be automatically withdrawn.

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