Michael, who is based in Europe and asked to remain anonymous, stored the cryptocurrency in a password-protected digital wallet.
He generated a password using the RoboForm password manager and stored that password in a file encrypted with a tool called TrueCrypt.
At some point, that file got corrupted, and Michael lost access to the 20-character password he had generated to secure his 43.6 BTC. Michael used the RoboForm password manager to generate the password but did not store it in his manager.
He worried that someone would hack his computer and obtain the password.
Grand is a famed hardware hacker who in 2022 helped another crypto wallet owner recover access to $2 million in cryptocurrency he thought he'd lost forever after forgetting the PIN to his Trezor wallet.
Dozens of people have contacted Grand to help them recover their treasure.
Grand is an electrical engineer who began hacking computing hardware at age 10 and in 2008 cohosted the Discovery Channel's Prototype This show.
He now consults with companies that build complex digital systems to help them understand how hardware hackers like him might subvert their systems.
He cracked the Trezor wallet in 2022 using complex hardware techniques that forced the USB-style wallet to reveal its password.
Michael stored his cryptocurrency in a software-based wallet, which meant none of Grand's hardware skills were relevant this time.
He considered brute-forcing Michael's password-writing a script to automatically guess millions of possible passwords to find the correct one-but determined this wasn't feasible.
He briefly considered that the RoboForm password manager Michael used to generate his password might have a flaw in the way it generated passwords, which would allow him to guess the password more easily.
Last June he approached Grand again, hoping to convince him to help, and this time Grand agreed to give it a try, working with a friend named Bruno in Germany who also hacks digital wallets.
This Cyber News was published on packetstormsecurity.com. Publication date: Thu, 30 May 2024 14:13:05 +0000