Unciphered proposes to crack the Ripple ex-CTO’s wallet containing 7,002 BTC

The digital-asset recovery firm Unciphered, in an open letter, proposed unlocking the wallet belonging to former Ripple chief technology officer Stefan Thomas. It holds 7,002 BTC (about $244 million at the time of writing).

In 2021, Thomas told of losing access to the address. According to the programmer, he lost the password sheet for the IronKey hardware wallet several years ago — there are only two password attempts remaining.

According to Unciphered, the firm’s staff developed a method to crack the hardware and access the Bitcoin keys. The technology journal Wired сообщил that the company was able to access data on a similar IronKey after “200 trillion attempts” to bypass the limit on the number of incorrect passwords.

“Hacking secured hardware is difficult. Hacking a device that meets the requirements of FIPS-140-2 Level 3 (for example, your IronKey) borders on impossible,” the company said.

Nevertheless, Unciphered asserted that it could crack the wallet of the former Ripple CTO, and pledged to provide evidence of the process.

Earlier in January 2021, a Reddit user restored access to a wallet with 127 BTC that had been lost for several years.

Later it emerged that a resident of South Africa lost access to a wallet mined 10 years ago with 20 BTC.