Cryptocurrency owner managed to find the password to a crypto wallet with $ 3 million in bitcoins, which he had been searching for 13 years

Wired informs that two researchers helped a European resident recover the password to a crypto wallet with 43.6 BTC worth about $ 2.96 million.

The man, who calls himself Michael, said that in 2013 he created a cryptocurrency wallet and used the RoboForm application to generate a secure password. The software stored information in encrypted form and after the file was damaged, Michael lost the 20-digit password needed to access 43.6 BTC.

In 2022, he turned to Joe Grand, a well-known hardware hacker known as Kingpin, who helped the owner of the Trezor wallet regain access to $ 2 million worth of assets after losing his PIN. However, in Michael’s case, it was software, and most of Grand’s skills were useless. He agreed to take on the job about a year later after repeated requests from Michael and brought in a partner from Germany named Bruno.

The researchers spent several months reverse engineering the version of RoboForm that Michael could have used in 2013. As a result, they found a vulnerability (fixed in 2015) — the software used temporary stamps from the computer to generate a password.

According to the wallet’s log, Michael transferred cryptocurrency to it on April 14, 2013, but he could not remember when he created the password. Experts examined the parameters that Michael used when using RoboForm and configured the program to generate 20 characters with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and eight special characters from March 1 to April 20.

It didn’t work, so they extended the time frame to June 1. It was all in vain. According to Michael, Grand and Bruno kept contacting him to see if he was sure about the parameters he was using.

«They were really annoying because who knows what I did 10 years ago,» he said.

Michael found other passwords that he had created with RoboForm in 2013, and two of them did not contain special characters. The researchers made adjustments to their algorithm.

In November 2023, they met with Michael in person and handed him the correct password — without special characters — generated on May 15, 2013.

«In the end, we were lucky: our parameters and time range were correct. If any of these were wrong, we would have continued to make assumptions and take shots in the dark. Pre-calculating all possible passwords would have taken much longer,» Grand commented on the story.

The experts immediately took their share for the work they had done; at the time, the price of bitcoin BTC $61,726.32 Bitcoin -2.78% Market capitalization $1.22 trillion VOL. 24 hours $2.38 billion was about $ 38,000. Michael waited for the price to rise to $ 62,000 and sold some of the coins. He intends to keep the remaining 30 BTC until the price reaches $ 100,000.

In his opinion, losing his password many years ago turned out to be a stroke of luck, as he would have sold the coins earlier, losing a significant portion of his fortune.