This was honestly one of the Stupidest things that I did & the cost of it is 2963$ at the time of writing😵

I got to know about the hack a day after as on Saturday I was inactive, on Sunday I was tallying my accounts and opened my SafePal wallet & it showed big fat 0

My heart started racing wtf happened, I was on a call with a friend and told him “I think I got hacked”, he thought I was joking but I hung up the call & went through the records. there was an outward transaction of 1627$ which was done about 24 hours ago. I knew I didn't do it so who did? confirmed the transfer on the blockchain & asked about it in the group as 10 heads are better than 1 at solving problems.

meanwhile, I went through my Binance Dapp which was connected to the same account, hmmm interesting it was Safe, funds in the dapp about 1900$ were safe they haven't been moved. I moved them right away & then checked the group.

a lot of ideas were thrown around but I knew it have to be my private keys, they were compromised someone had got a hold of it But how!?

there was a file circulating around on telegram the day before, I usually don't download anything from telegram especially programs but this was shared by someone I truly look up to & who is always helpful. pinged him up & told him it has to be that file! it has a virus. before installing I had run the windows defender but it didn't show any virus, same on the other end as well my friend had ran not 1 but 2 antivirus & it didn't show up as a virus.

He finally had a full scan done on Avast & voila we found the culprit!!!

Now that I knew my laptop have been compromised I went through my wallets, one more has been compromised but I was still not able to figure out how!!!

I had created a text file with my private keys but had put them in a RAR file with a password, how was the hacker able to go through that as well 😵‍💫

finally started going through my folders & found the reason!!

there were a couple of text files left out in the folder that was never deleted. most of it was old wallets that I haven't been using for a while but 2 of those had a good amount of funds as well as NFT that I had got in Bull Market.

The damage had been done tried to control it but was too late what was done is already done, at the start, I was extremely worried about HOW it had happened but figuring out What was the cause calmed me down & take the next actions.

I have gotten a few comments stating I should have kept funds in hardware wallets, I do have a hardware wallet but I have a few software wallets for quick transfers. many may not know this but I have stated this before as well I am a trader so most of the time I move back and forth from an exchange account to dex wallets.

another comment was keeping keys in the simple text file is stupid *I agree* as I said earlier I have my keys stored in the RAR file which is password protected, what I could have done is MADE SURE THAT TEXT FILES HAVE BEEN DELETED PROPERLY! also those files should have been kept offline in a USB drive.

been in crypto for 2–3 years & trust me have been downloading torrents long before then, the real mistake In my opinion I made was that I wasn't vigilant enough, though it was shared by someone I trusted I should have never downloaded & opened the file. even if I wanted to should have gone through intensive virus testing before opening it.