In early 2011, a Swiss programmer named Stefan Thomas was one of the few experts in the world on something called bitcoin. A company commissioned him to create a video explaining this, and Thomas asked to be paid in exactly that cryptocurrency. They did it: They transferred 7,002 Bitcoins; It was a staggering amount that wasn’t a big deal at the time: Bitcoin was under a dollar at the time. Then many things happened.

230 million euros. When Thomas tried to access these bitcoins again in mid-2011, the cryptocurrency made a brutal jump and was worth almost $30: His bitcoins were equivalent to $140,000, and he tried to recover them but was unsuccessful. They are now much more valuable and at the current price these 7,002 Bitcoins are equivalent to just over 230 million Euros.

Three spares, only one survived. At the end of 2011, Wired reported that Thomas had three copies of his Bitcoin wallet, but unknowingly deleted the contents of two of them and also lost the paper on which he had recorded the password for the third backup. This third backup was located on a security USB key called a “cold wallet.”

Just two more tries. It took Thomas 10 attempts to crack the code, but in those 12 years he had already used eight of them. There are two left and he can’t seem to figure it out on his own. Over the past months, this user contacted an expert and also a company that specializes in recovering lost cryptocurrency accounts. None of them seem to make any progress on the goal, but that’s where things get interesting.

unencrypted. This is the name of the company created by a group of experts in 2021 with the aim of cracking the security of encrypted USB security keys used to protect cryptocurrencies, solving those that cannot be decrypted.

Ironkey S200. Thomas used this security USB key to protect his bitcoins, but he does not remember the password that gave him access to these bitcoins. But in Unciphered, they bought all such keys to isolate and examine them with super special machines like a CT scanner or laser tools to isolate and examine the Atmel chip that serves as the “safe zone” of this key. . . Managing to unlock this key was the Everest in this segment for them. And they finally did it.

Stephen Thomas. Source: XRP Ledger Foundation

Success. A Wired editor described receiving a text message from one of those responsible for Unencrypted, a few days after he sent them one of these keys encrypted with a password only he knew. The message contained the exact three random words he had chosen as his master password: They had indeed managed to decrypt his device, and it had “only” taken 200 million attempts using a supercomputer. Like?

“Eternal lives”. Theoretically the Ironkey S200 only allows 10 attempts to enter the password, but in Unciphered they exploited the vulnerability they discovered to force the user to make an infinite number of attempts. It’s like someone playing a video game has infinite lives: That way, they’ll eventually be able to finish the game. And the same thing happens with encryption, because after an infinite number of tries you can apply the brute force system and finally find the password. It’s just a matter of time and computing power, and a supercomputer (or powerful computer) can speed things up considerably.

Thomas rejects this option. Wired contacted Stefan Thomas, and although he reportedly found a seemingly guaranteed method to get Unciphered’s funds back, he declined the offer to use it as a key to it for a fee. His excuse was this: He was still in negotiations with that company and that person was theoretically specialized in this field. According to Wired and comments from those responsible for Unciphered, none of them are even remotely close to achieving this, but they are.

Take your time. Thomas had already spoken about the issue in The New York Times in 2021 and was also the protagonist of an issue in Xataka last year. This programmer does not seem to have any particular interest in winning back these 230 million euros immediately, perhaps because he hopes that the figure will increase even more in the near future if the value of Bitcoin increases. This programmer doesn’t seem to need any of that either: He eventually invested in other crypto projects — he was Ripple’s CTO but resigned before the controversy — and seems to have his life figured out.

Lost Bitcoins. What happened to Thomas is part of a well-known and unfortunately common phenomenon: a study conducted years ago found that 17% to 23% of Bitcoins ever issued were lost, and Chainalytics estimated that the value of these wallets was forgotten amounts. guessed. To $140,000 million in 2021.

Image | XRP Ledger Foundation

in Xataka | Two million dollars in a crypto wallet, a forgotten PIN and the solution: hack it