I previously had over 300 PPC in this wallet, which I withdrew previously - so, although the wallet was created offline, it has been “exposed” online
But still, I hardly use it, so was surprised to see this morning … zero! The remaining 373 PPC was removed just last month, on 6 February 2018, and not by me. Moreover, there were odd, tiny withdrawals of 0.25 and 0.01 PPC in January and the beginning of February, which were also not by me.
Any comments or clues?
I can’t find the address they went to (although that’s because of my lack of technical knowledge).
Paper wallets can be generated offline for maximum security, as mine was, but in order to withdraw coins, I had to input the private key into a client, meaning the private key was online at some point (“exposed”). I wonder if the private key was “grabbed” in some way by hostile software?
Three years ago, I gave two friends 10 PPC each in a paper wallet, as a gift - my friends are not crypto savvy, and so I know their private keys will never have been placed online - I checked their addresses today, and the PPC are still there, safe and sound.
So, I can only assume at this point that my own private key was compromised. I wonder whether the two tiny withdrawals were “probes”, and the enemy software came back for the lot.
I am not too bothered about the loss of the 31 PPC, it’s only $50 or so. But it is a significant lesson on the risk to a paper wallet if emptied and then used again.
Conclusion: never use a paper wallet twice, always create a new one.
To me it looks like you have imported the private key from the paper wallet into your desktop wallet, and spent the coins (sold to Poloniex) over time.
Was the desktop wallet used for multiple purposes? Did you have other peercoins in this wallet? Did you mean to spend these “other” coins rather than the coins imported from the paper wallet? Wondering if it was coins mistakingly spent or something more malicious that needs to investigate.
I do indeed have a Poloniex account, and have been sending PPC there recently.
I have checked dates of my PPC transfers (from my desktop client) to Poloniex and these correspond with the dates of the “disappearances” from the paper wallet. In fact, they correspond to within a few minutes.
So, it appears that, having imported the paper wallet private key into my desktop client, the client has later “reached out” and accessed the remaining Peercoins from the paper wallet.