A sweeper bot knows one of my ETH private key. What should I do?

Question

I had a private key which I accidentally pasted on a group instead of pasting it on my notes (yeah it was dumb). Fortunately, I expected someone managed to save it even though I deleted it in an instant so I never used it.

But I tried putting an amount 0.0001 ETH and it was automatically sent to a burn address as a fee.

Is there a way to cancel the sweeper bot? Or a way to encrypt an existing ETH Priv key, with a password like bip38 in bitcoin?

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 13 '20 at 14:33

2

No. Private key is the ultimate access mechanism to your account. It gives direct access to the account and it doesn't help anything anymore if you encrypt it with a password as someone already has it.

What you should do is simply start a new account with a new private key. It's super easy in whichever client you are using. Then just forget about the old account.

answered Jul 13 '20 at 14:33

Lauri Peltonen

29,391
3
20
57

What if I make and use another sweeper bot? Will that void the first bot? – ZenXiu Jul 14 '20 at 13:41
Nothing will void the fact that someone has your private key. – Lauri Peltonen Jul 14 '20 at 13:57

A sweeper bot knows one of my ETH private key. What should I do?

1 Answers1