Team of hackers unlock man's $3,000,000 Bitcoin wallet after he forgot his password for 11 years

Hackers helped a man gain access to his $3 million Bitcoin wallet after he accidentally locked himself out of it 11 years earlier.

Bitcoin landed on the cryptocurrency scene back in 2009 and was originally worth next to nothing. 

However, many of those who were savvy enough to invest in Bitcoin, or BTC, in its early days have gone on to become multimillionaires, like Erik Finman, who bought $1,000 of BTC when he was just 12 and was a millionaire by 18.

But the path didn’t run quite as smoothly for some, including one man who had to enlist the help of hackers to get his hands on his $3 million Bitcoin fortune. 

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One hacker found a flaw that allowed him to access the Bitcoin wallet

The unnamed man bought 43.6 Bitcoin for $4,000 and, in a bid to keep it safe and sound, he used a random password generator called RoboForm to create apasscode for his cryptocurrency wallet. 

He then saved the password to an encrypted file for extra security.  

But while all of that may sound like a smart move, the encrypted file ended up corrupted, and he became locked out of his own wallet. 

The years passed, and the BTC’s value exploded. 

Eleven years on, that $4,000 investment was now worth a mind-blowing $3 million, which would be cause for celebration if it wasn’t for the fact that the poor guy was still locked out of his wallet 

So, he decided to reach out to hacker and YouTuber Joe Grand for help, and, luckily for him, he agreed. 

The tech whizz got started by reverse engineering the version of RoboForm that the man had used, where he spotted something interesting. 

“While RoboForm’s passwords appear to be randomly generated, they’re not,” Grand said. 

“With the older versions of this software, if we can control the time, we can control the password.”

As time travel is not yet possible, Grand had to trick the RoboForm into thinking it was 2013 again and then set up some parameters, like password length, to get a fairly short list of potential passwords.

With the help of his pal and fellow hacker Bruno, the pair eventually hit on the correct parameters and managed to generate the same password. 

While the whole thing was a stunning display of the hackers’ skills, Grand also admitted that luck played a part. 

“We ultimately got lucky that our parameters and time range were right. If either of those were wrong, we would have … continued to take guesses/shots in the dark,” Grand told Wired.

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Other crypto millionaires haven’t been so lucky

While this guy was very fortunate to get Grand and his pal to help out and eventually gain access to his $3 million, that hasn’t been the case for everyone. 

Swiss businessman Stefan Thomas has hit headlines after he revealed he had just two attempts left to correctly guess his password and recover his $830 million Bitcoin fortune.

Meanwhile, British IT engineer James Howells has an even wilder story. 

He safely stored the private keys to his crypto wallet, which contained 8,000 BTC, on a hard drive. 

But the hard drive accidentally got thrown away, and despite his best efforts to track it down, it remains lost to this day.

We’re not sure even hackers could help with that one.

Timeline of major Bitcoin value milestones

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