An American forgot the password to a flash drive containing $240 million in offers. He has two password attempts left, and even hackers are ready to help.

American developer Stefan Thomas forgot the password for a flash drive on which 7,002 bitcoins were stored ($240 million at today’s exchange rate).

It used 8 out of 10 cells to protect the battery. At the moment there are two attempts left, and if they are unsuccessful, then all attempts will be deleted.

Hackers are ready to help Thomas recover his password, for a reward, of course. Some may even use a supercomputer to choose the password.

The password for the flash drive was written down on paper

Stephen

In 2011, Thomas received 7,002 awards for creating a video called What is Bitcoin? In 12 years it received 10 million views. At the time the video was published, the wait cost less than a dollar.

Same year a man accidentally deleted two wallet backupsa lost piece of paper, on which the password was then written down from the remains of a copy stored on a Kingston IronKey S1000 flash drive.

Thomas tried to recover the password for a week, but all attempts were unsuccessful.

I just lay in bed and thought about it. Then I went to the computer with some new strategy, but it didn’t materialize, and I fell into despair again.

Stephen

Now Thomas has two attempts left to enter the password. Sam Thomas stopped trying to remember his password a long time ago, but hackers are ready to do it for him.

Hacking a flash drive is very difficult, but possible

Kingston IronKay S1000

Thomas’ bitcoins are stored on a Kingston IronKey flash drive, which has a crypto chip built into the storage for cryptocurrency. The flash drive is also FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certified and has 256-bit encryption.

IronKey’s development was partially funded by the US Department of Homeland Security and used members of the military and intelligence agencies to store classified information.

Many people tried to hack IronKey, but only specialists from an unencrypted startup succeeded in doing so in October of this year.

Unciphered was founded in 2021 by cryptographers and hackers with the goal of unlocking stored flash drives. Zooming in Chain analysis, Globally, $140 billion in bitcoins are being read that are lost or locked in wallets. This is approximately 20% of the total number of cycles.

The startup says it has helped customers unlock “many millions” of dollars worth of wallets since its founding, but the total value is nowhere near Thomas’ flash drive.

The unencrypted data is processed by about 10 people, some of whom have experience working for the US National Security Agency and other government agencies. At the beginning of 2023, hackers decided to hack IronKey and then offer their services to Thomas.

They bought the value of the IronKey S1000. To completely redesign the device, experts scanned the IronKey using a CT scanner and then began the complex surgery required to deconstruct it.

They cut out an Atmel chip that serves as a “secure enclave” to store all crypto information. They dipped this chip in nitric acid to “uncap” it, removing a layer of epoxy resin designed to prevent hacking. They then began polishing the chip, layer by layer. Each removed layer was photographed using an optical microscope to build a complete 3D model of the chip.

Team members even tracked down the engineers who worked on the Atmel chip and another IronKey microcontroller from the ’90s to learn technical details about them.

It was a lot like a treasure hunt. You’re following a map that’s faded and stained with coffee, and you know there’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but you have no idea where the rainbow leads.

Nick Fedoroff, COO of Unciphered

Hackers were able to hack IronKey for the first time in July of this year. They do not disclose the technical details of the hack. The discovered vulnerabilities are considered too dangerous to be published on the Internet.

If this leak were to somehow occur, it would have much more serious national security implications than a cryptocurrency wallet.

Nick Fedoroff, COO of Unciphered

Now Unciphered has improved the IronKey unlocking method. According to the hackers, they have unlocked IronKey more than a thousand times. Three times Unencrypted demonstrated the hacking of a flash drive to Wired journalists.

The last time the hack took less than a day. With the help of a supercomputer, hackers found a password consisting of three words. This process took 200 trillion.

Thomas has no plans to collaborate with Unciphered, although they may help him

Team members are not encrypted.

After several months of work, the hackers from Unciphered were ready to offer their services to Thomas.

We were hesitant to ask him for help until we had a complete, provable, and reliable attack.

Representative Unencrypted

The only problem was that Thomas didn’t seem to need their help.

The fact is that Thomas entered into an agreement in 2022 with other security experts who promised to hack his flash drive. In accordance with the terms of the transaction, each of them receives a part of the conclusions, regardless of who chooses the correct password.

I’m already working on recovery with another group of experts, so I can no longer negotiate with someone new. It’s possible that the current team may decide to subcontract Unciphered if they feel that’s the best move. We had to face and see.

Stephen

To unlock the flash drive, Thomas entered into agreements with the forensics and cybersecurity investigations company Naxo, as well as with the famous hacker and reverse engineering specialist Chris Tarnovsky.

According to Tarnovsky, at a meeting last May, Thomas presented a generous fee, but did not specify the amount. Since then, Tarnovsky has worked little on this project. He wanted Thomas to pay the advance, but he refused.

I want Stefan to put some money up front. It’s a lot of work and I have a mortgage and bills to worry about.

Chris Tarnovsky, hacker and reverse engineer

The Unciphered team is skeptical about Naxo. In their opinion, There are only a small number of hardware hackers worldwide capable of reverse engineering the chosen hack for IronKey.and none of them work with Naxo.

Sam Thomas was in no hurry to unlock his crypto wallet.

When you are dealing with such gross beings, everything remains eternal. With the person you’re working with, you need some kind of contract, and that contract has to be very strong, because if there’s any problem with him, suddenly hundreds of millions of dollars are on the line.

Stephen

Unlocking the flash drive doesn’t seem to be a major problem for Thomas. The New York Times reported that he has other infections that have “given him more riches than he knows what to do with.”

In 2012, he joined the cryptocurrency startup Ripple and received a lot of XRP, Ripple’s own cryptocurrencies.

An unencrypted plan to publish an open letter and video to Thomas to convince him to cooperate with them. But if he finally answers, the hackers will still continue to do their job, because there are still many blocked gateways around the world.