Imagine the thrill of finding an old wallet containing a forgotten $10 bill. Now, multiply that joy a hundredfold. An anonymous man, after years of being locked out, finally gained access to a staggering $3 million worth of Bitcoin that had been inaccessible for over a decade.
This unique story started when the man, whose identity remains hidden, sought the expertise of electrical engineer Joe Grand, also known as ‘Kingpin’ online, to recover his Bitcoin. Locked in an encrypted file was 43.6 BTC, originally safeguarded with a password generated by RoboForm, a random password creator. However, the owner had lost his password after securing it over a decade ago, ironically in an effort to protect it from potential hackers.
Fearful that someone might gain access to his funds by compromising his computer, the owner reached out to Grand for help. Grand, who had previously assisted another client in recovering over $2 million in crypto back in 2022, explained that while he usually declines similar requests, he found this particular challenge compelling.
In a YouTube video, the owner described his initial security steps: “I generated the password, copied it, saved it in the wallet’s passphrase, and then encrypted it in a text file.” Back then, the value of Bitcoin in his account was roughly $3,000 to $4,000. However, the cryptocurrency’s price has since skyrocketed by over 20,000%, prompting him to seek out Grand’s help to recover the funds.
To tackle the challenge, Grand utilized a tool developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) to deconstruct the RoboForm password generator’s code. He discovered that, contrary to expectation, RoboForm’s older versions didn’t always generate fully random passwords. With precise timing, Grand figured he could potentially replicate the exact conditions under which the password was created.
As Grand described, “In a perfect scenario, every password generated should be unique and random. But in this older RoboForm version, we realized that if we could adjust the time, we could recreate the password.”
By resetting the system clock to 2013, when the password was initially generated, Grand, alongside his colleague Bruno, attempted to replicate the original password. After numerous tries, they finally succeeded.
Grand admitted to Wired that the breakthrough was partly due to luck. “We were fortunate that our timing and parameters aligned. A slight miscalculation, and we would’ve kept guessing blindly,” he explained.
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