Fake Wasabi Bitcoin Wallet Emerges
A fake version of Wasabi wallet, probably designed to steal bitcoins, has emerged online at wasabibitcoinwallet.org. (Don’t visit that site.)
Wasabi Lead Developer Exposes Fake Website
According to Wasabi developer nopara73 (the only confirmed identity he has), the site is only trying to assault Windows users. Only the Windows version of the wallet is actually non-legitimate. The rest of the download links on the site direct to Wasabi’s actual Github repository.
The first malware that pretends to be Wasabi: https://t.co/08VrjnrVsr
Notice only the Windows download link points to their own website, the rest is to our GitHub? pic.twitter.com/t7jKViESZ2
— nopara73 (@nopara73) March 21, 2019
Nopara73 downloaded the off-brand version of the wallet and the anti-virus software he’s using found no problems with it. For him, that makes the issue all the more concerning:
Oh boy. This is going to be messy: pic.twitter.com/0RLUcrztxK
— nopara73 (@nopara73) March 21, 2019
An insecure or compromised Bitcoin wallet can cost someone thousands of dollars. Wasabi is not the first wallet to have a pretender emerge. Fake Electrum wallets have come out in the past, but the community is pretty quick to warn people.
Perhaps The Only Drawback of Open Source Software: Anyone Can Redistribute
The nature of open source software is that anyone can create a clone and change it anyway they want. This is actually the intended effect. The terms of the GNU Public License, however, make it illegal to release a product of the same name.
