Forgotten Password Locks €4.3M in Bitcoin – Until a Hacker Cracked the Code 🔐🧠
😬 A Costly Mistake:
A European man known only as Michael nearly lost access to 43.6 BTC — worth Rp74 billion (~$4.3 million) — after forgetting the password to his crypto wallet. Back in 2013, he used RoboForm to generate a complex password and stored it in an encrypted TrueCrypt file… which later became corrupted.
🔍 Enter the Hacker:
After crypto experts deemed the case hopeless, Michael turned to Joe Grand, a renowned hardware hacker who previously recovered a wallet holding $2 million in BTC. Grand initially considered brute-force attacks but realized the odds were astronomical due to the password’s complexity.
🕵️♂️ The Breakthrough:
Instead, Grand dug into RoboForm’s older software version and discovered a critical flaw — passwords were partially based on the system's date and time. Unfortunately, Michael couldn’t recall when he generated the password.
📅 Trial & Error – Then Victory:
They knew Michael moved the BTC on April 14, 2013, so they generated password guesses from March 1 to April 20 — no luck.
They expanded the window to June 1 — still nothing.
Then, they removed special characters from the pattern based on Michael’s other old passwords… and struck gold.
The password had been created on May 15, 2013.
> “We were lucky that both the parameters and time range were correct. One mistake, and we’d still be guessing in the dark,” said Grand.
💡 Takeaway:
Even in crypto, where code is law, human memory is still the weakest link. And sometimes, the best backup… is a hacker with a hunch.