Nostr Web Client

Turns out he downloaded a scam wallet (sparrow mobile) while trying to set up a "watch only" wallet. It asked for the wallet descriptor which is essentially everything a new wallet needs to spend UTXO's from the old wallet. So it was not a "watch only" wallet at all.

A fairly advanced scam which relies on:

1) The user not knowing there is no Sparrow mobile wallet

2) The user not knowing what wallet descriptors are

Always verify your downloads. In this case the user could have noticed the scam by not finding the mobile release on Craig Raw's trusted release listings while trying to verify with PGP.

metalhead.btc 1y ago

What’s a wallet descriptor? What’s in it?

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

<old>cypherhoodlum 1y ago

Wallet descriptors help with importing/exporting wallets. They basically tell the new wallet where the funds are and how to spend them. It's not trivial to figure out the addresses and derivation paths used by the old wallet when "migrating" to a new wallet, so descriptors help with that process.

The crafty part of the scam here was getting the victim to "reveal" the seed indirectly by asking for the wallet descriptor (machine readable instructions for the new wallet to spend the victim's funds).

Here's a bitcoin stackexchange thread about descriptors:

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/99540/what-are-output-descriptors