Topics: Money, Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, Technology, News
Hackers have offered a solution to a man who has two more password guesses or else he'll lose $240 million in Bitcoin.
Forgetting your password is a pain in the a**. You scramble through every possible combination before ultimately giving up, hitting 'forgot password' and resetting it to something you'll hopefully remember next time.
But for one man, the stakes surrounding a forgotten password are a little higher.
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In 2011, Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, uploaded an animated video titled 'What Is Bitcoin' to YouTube.
The video was made for a Bitcoin enthusiast based in Switzerland and Thomas was paid in Bitcoin as compensation - 7,002 Bitcoins to be exact.
At the time, the coins were worth just $2 each, however, each coin soon became worth approximately $34,095.80, making his collection now worth a staggering $238,735,990.80.
Not bad for a one-minute animated video, right?
Unfortunately for Thomas, he can't remember the password to the encrypted IronKey hard drive where the Bitcoin is kept.
Now, this hard drive isn't your average piece of tech.
It is so secure that it gives whoever is trying to access it just 10 guesses to figure out the password before it basically self-destructs, making the contents inaccessible to anyone - even its rightful owner.
Since the value of Bitcoin skyrocketed, Thomas has attempted to access the hard drive in various different ways, but none of his attempts so far have been successful.
As a result, the programmer has just two guesses left before his fortune is lost forever.
Now, Thomas isn't the only person trying to get into the hard drive.
Groups of cybersecurity experts tempted by the possibility of hacking the wallet have also been attempting to figure out how to break into it.
And one claims to have found a solution.
Unciphered, a firm that specializes in recovering lost cryptocurrency, say they have found a way to crack into decade-old IronKey hard drives.
They demonstrated the method with Wired journalist, Andy Greenberg, who set a password and had it messaged to him the following day.
But, despite the large fortune at stake, Thomas isn't interested, for now at least.
When Unciphered reached out to him with their method, he declined their help due to agreements he has with other teams who are also looking for solutions.
Speaking to Wired, Thomas said: “I have already been working with a different set of experts on the recovery so I'm no longer free to negotiate with someone new.
“It's possible that the current team could decide to subcontract Unciphered if they feel that's the best option. We'll have to wait and see."
