The man who forgot the password to a USB drive in which he stored 7,000 bitcoins. He has two attempts left before the device automatically deletes them.

Back in 2011, Stefan Thomas was one of the few cryptocurrency experts in the world. The only requirement this Swiss programmer asked for was that the payment be made in bitcoins. In total, he received 7,002 bitcoins for his work, which at that time was worth less than a dollar each.

He made three backups of them but accidentally deleted two.

The third backup is stored on a USB drive or 'cold wallet' from IronKey that automatically erases its contents after 10 failed attempts to enter the correct password. The problem is that Stefan Thomas lost the paper where he wrote down the key and, so far, has exhausted eight opportunities. This means he only has two left to guess correctly and access the more than 700 million euros in bitcoins stored inside.

Kingston IronKey USB drives lock and permanently encrypt the information they store if the user fails to enter the correct password within 10 attempts. A challenge seems to have been successfully tackled by the company Unciphered, which has just demonstrated that it has the necessary resources to recover the password forgotten by Stefan Thomas.

Unciphered has discovered a vulnerability in IronKey S200 drives that allows the owner to have infinite attempts to guess the password. Furthermore, it has developed a 'brute force' computer system based on a supercomputer capable of testing millions of combinations per second.

As is obvious, Unciphered's goal is to unlock Stefan Thomas's USB drive in exchange for a hefty fee, which has not been disclosed. However, the Swiss programmer does not seem convinced and has declined the company's first offer. That said, he assures that negotiations are still ongoing.