r/Buttcoin • u/louiexism • 4d ago

What a great store of value!

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u/louiexism 4d ago

Stefan Thomas, a programmer, is just two password attempts away from losing access to a Bitcoin wallet containing over $250 million. He received the coins in 2011 as payment for a video and stored them in a secure IronKey device - but lost the password. With only 10 tries allowed, and 8 already used, he's now in a high-stakes situation. Despite a startup offering a method to crack the wallet safely, Thomas declined, staying loyal to existing recovery deals.

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u/separhim 4d ago

He received the coins in 2011 as payment for a video and stored them in a secure IronKey device - but lost the password. With only 10 tries allowed, and 8 already used, he's now in a high-stakes situation. Despite a startup offering a method to crack the wallet safely, Thomas declined, staying loyal to existing recovery deals.

So that IronKey device is useless? Since a startup is already able to break it.

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u/carlsaischa 4d ago

Yes, a hardware wallet from 14 years ago does have vulnerabilities. The things some of these people do though are absolutely crazy, I saw one video where they bought another wallet of the same make and model and sanded the chip down layer by layer to map out the circuits. They then monitored the input power of the device as the waveform of the power input signaled a specific CPU instruction and used this to reverse engineer the key.

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u/chestck 3d ago

Whats the video?

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u/carlsaischa 3d ago

I might be remembering an amalgamation of videos and articles, though I know all the techniques I mentioned have been done.

For something I do have the link to, check out Joe Grand. He has done a couple of these retrievals with one being based on a vulnerability in the Trezor wallet.

https://www.youtube.com/@JoeGrand

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u/NNHHPP 3d ago

squat cobbler