A group of hackers has successfully unlocked a $3 million Bitcoin wallet after the owner, known only as Michael, forgot his password for 11 years. Michael initially contacted electrical engineer Joe Grand, also known as “Kingpin,” in 2022 to help access an encrypted file containing 43.6 BTC, which was worth about $5,300 in 2013. He had used Roboform to generate a 20-character password and stored it in a file encrypted with TrueCrypt.
Despite initial reluctance, Grand eventually agreed to help and teamed up with his colleague Bruno. They used a tool developed by the US National Security Agency (NSA) to disassemble the password generator’s code. Grand explained that while Roboform’s passwords appear to be randomly generated, older versions of the software allowed them to control the password by controlling the time.
The team cleverly tricked the system by using a date range between March 1 and April 20, 2013, to identify when the password was created. After adjusting the time frame and gathering more information from Michael, they discovered the password, which was generated on May 15, 2013, at 4:10:40 PM GMT. Grand noted that they were fortunate their parameters and time range were correct, which ultimately led to recovering the Bitcoin.
This remarkable feat underscores the critical importance of password management and the lengths to which some will go to recover lost cryptocurrency fortunes.
