A German programmer received a few thousand Bitcoins in 2011 and is now sitting on cryptocurrency worth $235 million (about €222 million). But he has a problem: he forgot his password. Now a hacker organization wants to help him, but apparently the owner of the USB stick isn’t particularly interested
This is the situation: German programmer Stefan Thomas received 7,002 Bitcoins as a gift from an early Bitcoin fan in 2011. Back then, one Bitcoin was barely worth a US dollar. Thomas put the Bitcoins on an Ironkey, an encrypted USB stick, wrote the password for the device on a piece of paper, but lost this piece of paper.
The problem: The Ironkey is created so that you have 10 attempts to enter the correct password. Thomas has now used 8 attempts. If he is wrong twice more, the Bitcoins are lost forever.
The Bitcoins are now worth over 200 million US dollars. A hacker team wants to offer him help, but the owner is apparently not interested. That’s the equivalent of 225 million euros.
Hacker organization offers to crack the stick for a ransom
Who wants to help the German? A start-up called Uniciphered has now offered the owner the opportunity to open the USB stick for him. After all, it’s about $235 million. After months of preparation, they are now ready to open the USB stick using a secret hacking technique.
But the problem is that the owner of the stick apparently doesn’t want anyone to help him. The head of Uniciphered, Nick Fedoroff, explained somewhat unhappily to the online magazine Wired: “We have cracked the IronKey. Now we have to crack Stefan. That will be the hardest part.”
A long telephone conversation has already been held with the owner. But after the phone call he didn’t answer again. Fedoroff finds this quite strange. After all, there is a lot of money involved here. And for Chris Tarnovsky, who is behind the research, it’s also about a lot of money: Thomas had told him that he would be “generous” if he managed to decrypt the IronKey, but did not mention a fee or a commission. Since then, Tanovsky has been waiting for Thomas to get in touch:
I want Stefan [Thomas] spits out some money in advance. It’s a lot of work and I have to take care of my mortgage and bills.
Nobody except Thomas knows whether there really are 7,002 Bitcoin on the USB stick
What’s next? Unciphered plans to publish an open letter and a video in the next few days to convince the owner of the stick. But there could be completely different reasons why Thomas is not interested in the stick:
Earned a lot of money with Bitcoin: Another user had a similar experience: He also bought a thousand Bitcoins for little money a few years ago. Today, 11 years later, he is suddenly a multimillionaire. And a few days ago, the user reactivated his digital wallet and moved his funds with a large transaction. This had surprised and confused many Bitcoin owners:
A user buys a thousand Bitcoins for 4.50 euros each – 11 years later he is suddenly a multimillionaire