A German programmer received several thousand Bitcoins in 2011 and is now sitting on a cryptocurrency worth 235 million US dollars (about 222 million euros). But he has a problem: he has forgotten his password. Now a hacker organization wants to help him, but the owner of the USB stick is supposedly not very keen
This is the situation: The German programmer Stefan Thomas was gifted 7002 Bitcoins by an early Bitcoin fan in 2011. Back then, one Bitcoin was hardly worth one US dollar. Thomas put the Bitcoins on an Ironkey, an encrypted USB stick, wrote the password for the device on a note, but lost that note.
The problem: The Ironkey is designed so that you have 10 attempts to enter the correct password. In the meantime, Thomas has already used 8 attempts. If he gets it wrong 2 more times, the Bitcoins will be lost forever.
Meanwhile, the Bitcoins are worth over 200 million US dollars. A hacker team wants to offer him help, but the owner supposedly has no interest. That amounts to 225 million euros.
Hacker organization offers to crack the stick for ransom
Who wants to help the German? A startup called Uniciphered has now offered to open the USB stick for its owner. After all, it’s about 235 million dollars. After months of preparation, they are now ready to open the USB stick with a secret hacking technique.
But the problem is that the owner of the stick supposedly does not want help. The head of Uniciphered, Nick Fedoroff, unfortunately explained to the online magazine Wired: “We cracked the IronKey. Now we need to crack Stefan. That will be the hardest part.”
They have already had a long phone conversation with the owner. But after the call, he has not gotten back to them. Fedoroff finds that quite strange. After all, this is a lot of money. 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 succeeded in decrypting the IronKey, but he did not mention any fees or commissions. Since then, Tarnovsky has been waiting for Thomas to reach out:
I want Stefan [Thomas] to put out some money upfront. It’s a lot of work, and I have to take care of my mortgage and bills.
No one but Thomas knows if there are really 7,002 Bitcoins on the USB stick
What’s next? Unciphered plans to publish an open letter and a video in the coming days to convince the owner of the stick. But there could be entirely different reasons why Thomas has no interest in the stick:
- Apparently, Thomas already possesses “so much wealth [that] he doesn’t know what to do with it” thanks to other crypto ventures.
- Moreover, it is impossible to know for sure what Thomas’ IronKey really contains.
- Perhaps the keys to the 7,002 Bitcoins are stored elsewhere, or they have already disappeared because he has used up the attempts.
- Additionally, Uniciphered speculates that Thomas may also be in contact with another provider.
Made a lot of money with Bitcoin: Another user experienced something similar: he bought a thousand Bitcoins for little money a few years ago. Today, 11 years later, he is suddenly a multimillionaire. Just a few days ago, the user reactivated his digital wallet and transferred large sums of money. This surprised and confused many Bitcoin owners:
