Two researchers helped a man find the lost password to his cryptocurrency wallet containing 43.6 BTC. This is worth almost $2.96 million in currency terms.
One of the researchers, Joe Grand, is a hardware hacker who previously unearthed lost bitcoins stored in Trezor wallets. Grand explains in the video that he and his friend took advantage of a long-fixed vulnerability in the password generator RoboForm, which was used to generate the wallet’s password, to access the wallet.
An anonymous man named Michael set up a cryptocurrency wallet sometime in 2013 and then used RoboForm to create a unique password. Michael decided not to store his passwords in RoboForm due to security concerns and kept them in an encrypted file.
However, once the encrypted files were compromised, Michael no longer had the 20-digit password needed to access the 43.6 BTC in his wallet.
In 2022, Michael asked Grand for help. Grand tapped a friend named Bruno to help crack RoboForm’s software.
They discovered that RoboFarm had a vulnerability in RoboForm’s “random number” generator. The generator linked the password to a specific date and time on the user’s computer when the password was generated. The issue was fixed in 2015, but the bug affected passwords created before then.
Michael didn’t remember exactly when he created his password, but researchers noted that he transferred bitcoins to the wallet on April 13, 2013. Using specific time parameters, they tested numerous passwords until they found the correct generated password. May 15, 2013.
Some of Michael’s bitcoins were delivered to Grand and Bruno. Michael sold another small lot and now owns 30 BTC worth about $2 million. Michael told Wired that he plans to hold on to Bitcoin until a single token is worth $100,000.
He added that he was glad to have his wallet inaccessible as he had been holding on to his tokens for a long time, allowing them to increase in value over time.
According to The Block Price, Bitcoin was trading at $67,840 as of 1:21 PM (17:21 UTC) on May 28, down 3.26% from the previous day.
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