$5 WRENCH ATTACK
“Decentralization won’t be much of a deal if security can’t be guaranteed.”
Instances that question whether decentralization is a viable alternative to the established financial systems do occasionally occur. The list includes everything from platform hacks to rug-pulls to regulation and scalability.
The fact that cryptocurrency is part of a new technology and has more opportunity for improvement is one thing that does, however, require paying significant attention.
This article won’t argue for or against the adoption of cryptocurrencies; instead, it will focus on how to protect your investments.
Ever heard of a $5 wrench attack?
Even though you could probably give away $5 and not care much about it, a $5 wrench attack isn’t something you’d not care about. As cheap as a “$5 wrench attack” sounds, it’s capable of causing a lot of damage.
WHAT IS A $5 WRENCH ATTACK?
A $5 wrench attack is when someone decides to physically attack someone who owns cryptocurrency in order to force them to hand over their assets or give up their private keys after learning about their holdings.
The fact that the victim is the owner of a wallet address with cryptocurrency assets in it must have been known to the attackers for a $5 wrench attack to at least take place.
Perhaps you’ve read that disclosing your public key only gives a hacker limited access to your crypto assets and that the most they could do were note your wallet transactions. However, times have changed, so you might want to reconsider blindly disclosing your public key. Even though your public keys may not allow criminals to access your wallet, your private key could very well give them the incentive to physically search for you.
New to trading? Try crypto trading bots or copy trading
The last thing any crypto investor wants to go through is to be attacked and tormented by ominous, perhaps armed individuals demanding access to their private keys or crypto wallet. In this current century, some people have become fully decentralized, which means they retain a significant portion of their wealth in cryptocurrencies and would suffer greatly if their private keys were compromised.
You agreed to take on the responsibility of guarding your wallet when you choose to use decentralized systems rather than centralized ones like banks. It’s clear that you’ve been doing a great job, but you might want to step it up a notch. Times are changing, and its becoming extremely wild out there.
You could file a complaint and request that your bank cooperate with other crime-fighting groups to assist in tracking down where your money ended up if you were coerced by criminals to transfer money from your bank to other bank accounts. This is only possible with the conventional banking system. It’s far from the case while dealing with cryptocurrencies; all transactions are fully anonymous. You cannot put a face to a wallet address (especially if it is a non-custodial wallet) until you are certain who has access to the account.
So what’s it going to be? Are you losing all your crypto assets to potential criminal physical assaults?
This piece would be incomplete without answers!
The reality with this, though, is that you still have some control. You can control how things pan out.
You only have to do it right.
PROTECTING YOURSELF FROM A $5 WRENCH ATTACK
You may have been properly educated up to this point that hackers and attackers may do much more damage with your private keys and nearly never gain access to your wallets just by knowing your public key. Even if that is still very much true, you ought to stop putting your public keys out there to everyone. The battle at hand is not one against internet attackers; rather, you must defend yourself from physical assailants who may threaten you into handing over your crypto assets to them.
If you’re used to doing this, you’re going to have to be the big guy and perhaps not flaunt your cryptocurrency fortune. Being SAFU is preferable to being sorry. You can only be worth a lot if you can grow and secure your money. Continue to refrain from disclosing your cryptocurrency holdings on platforms where you can be easily identified. If you must make your crypto assets public, then do it using a completely anonymous account; something that can’t be linked to you. When your anonymity with a wallet address is properly maintained, it would be difficult for anyone to connect the ownership of that wallet address to you (even on the internet).
If you’re still clinging to a single wallet, it may not be what you wanted to hear, but it’s time to have more than one wallet. Having a decoy wallet where you can store just a little amount of your cryptocurrency holdings will help you stay safe. If the unintended occurs, you would only lose a fraction of your cryptocurrency holdings and not all of your investment. The attacker’s presumption is that you only have access to the fake wallets and nothing else. You could have more than one decoy wallet to be extra cautious in case the attacker believes you have additional wallets.
Living in a secure location and maintaining high levels of home security are surefire ways to avoid this kind of attack. Being in a more secure environment means you have a lower probability of being attacked and forced to hand over your crypto assets than someone who is staying in a vulnerable environment. This would imply that you should always be cautious of where you decide to go outside of your home and that your home’s security should be tight.
You might want to keep a low profile offline too; where you live and work too. Given that some people want to take your crypto investments, it would be preferable if they were unaware that you are a crypto investor. Avoid using labels like “crypto investor” so that there isn’t at least any pointless hype surrounding you and you might stop a $5 wrench attack from happening.
CONCLUSION
There are instances, both online and offline when someone would try to compromise your cryptocurrency investments, it’s important that you are aware of the possibility of these occurrences happening.
You should place a high priority on remaining SAFU in the crypto space.
