They Cracked the Code to a Locked USB Drive Worth $235 Million in Bitcoin. Then It Got Weird

[abarbarian]

Stefan Thomas lost the password to an encrypted USB drive holding 7,002 bitcoins. One team of hackers believes they can unlock it—if they can get Thomas to let them.

 

Quote

Smith had told me that guessing my passphrase might take several days. Guessing it at all, in fact, should have been impossible: IronKeys are designed to permanently erase their contents if someone tries just 10 incorrect password guesses. But Unciphered's hackers had developed a secret IronKey password-cracking technique—one that they've still declined to fully describe to me or anyone else outside their company—that gave them essentially infinite tries. My USB stick had reached Unciphered’s lab on Tuesday, and I was somewhat surprised to see my three-word passphrase texted back to me the very next morning. With the help of a high-performance computer, Smith told me, the process had taken only 200 trillion tries.

 

Cracking Iron Key's is a phenomenal feat.