BITCOIN HOLDER LOSES $750K IN BTC AFTER GOOGLE ACCOUNT HACK A longtime Bitcoin holder reportedly lost roughly $750,000 less than 12 hours after moving his BTC to a major Australian exchange. According to a close friend, hackers had compromised his Google account for roughly three months, gaining access to his email and cloud-backed Google Authenticator credentials. They waited for him to deposit BTC on an exchange. When he finally did, the attackers accessed the account and withdrew everything. The exchange believed it was the legitimate owner and approved the withdrawal. The victim reportedly woke at 3 a.m. to a notification saying his withdrawal had been approved. One major security takeaway is to disable cloud backup on Google Authenticator. If your Google account is compromised, synced authentication codes can become another point of attack. Hardware security keys such as YubiKeys offer stronger protection because authentication still requires possession of the physical key. Setting up two keys provides a backup if one is lost.