A pair of skilled hackers successfully cracked into a forgotten digital wallet that contained a valuable stash of Bitcoin (BTC), according to reports from Wired. The incident occurred in 2013 when a cryptocurrency owner, known only as “Michael,” stored his Bitcoin holdings in a password-protected digital wallet. Unfortunately, the password was stored in an encrypted file that became corrupted, leaving Michael unable to access his wallet and the 43.6 BTC it contained, which was valued at $5,300 at the time.

Experts in cryptography informed Michael that he would be unable to recover his crypto assets after losing the password. However, two hackers known as Grand and Bruno decided to lend a hand. They spent several months reverse-engineering the version of the RoboForm password program that Michael had used for his digital wallet. Through their efforts, they discovered that the supposedly random passwords generated by the tool were not truly random, as they were linked to the computer’s date and time.

By knowing the specific time when Michael generated the password, as well as the parameters he used (such as the number of characters and the inclusion of lowercase and uppercase letters, numbers, and special characters), Grand and Bruno believed they could crack the password more easily. However, it took time because Michael could not recall when he created the password. He only remembered that he initially transferred Bitcoin into his wallet on April 14, 2013, and that two other passwords he generated in 2013 did not contain special characters.

Finally, in November, Grand and Bruno managed to uncover the correct password. It lacked any special characters and had been generated on May 15, 2013, at 4:10:40 PM GMT. Grand remarked, “We ultimately got lucky that our parameters and time range were correct. If either of those were wrong, we would have continued to take guesses in the dark. Precomputing all the possible passwords would have taken significantly longer.”

When Michael regained access to his digital wallet, Bitcoin was worth $38,000. However, he decided to wait until the price rose to $62,000 before selling some of his assets. He now holds 30 BTC, which is currently valued at over $2 million, considering the current price of $67,543.

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