Hack of the century: A $3 million Bitcoin wallet resurfaced from the depths 10 years later

An epic tale worthy of a sci-fi movie unfolded behind the scenes of the crypto world. Ethical hackers literally defied the laws of time to help a man recover his forgotten Bitcoin wallet, worth nearly 3 million dollars.

RoboForm Flaw, a Leap into the Past to Unlock 3 Million in BTC

In 2013, a certain “Michael” had created a Bitcoin wallet and generated a highly secure 20-character password using the famous RoboForm software.

Unfortunately, the backup file had tragically corrupted, making the 43.6 bitcoins held within, worth about 2.96 million at today’s rate, inaccessible.

A decade later, renowned ethical hackers Joe Grand and Bruno managed to achieve the unthinkable: recover this digital treasure by exploiting an old vulnerability in RoboForm’s password generator.

A Temporal Boost for a Bitcoin Treasure

After intense research, the experts made a shocking discovery: RoboForm previously linked each password to the exact date and time of creation on the user’s PC. A glaring bug for a tool meant to produce completely random keys, and fatal for Michael’s password in 2013.

Disregarding the apparent laws of time, Grand and Bruno then embarked on a true digital odyssey. By meticulously reproducing the system clock from ten years ago, they were able to regenerate the original key and thus unlock the wallet containing the bitcoins.

Michael, the happily reunited owner, now plans to carefully hold onto his bitcoins until their value reaches the impressive threshold of 100,000 dollars each. A bold wager, mirroring the Herculean efforts expended to save this digital asset.