In 2011, San Francisco-based Computer programmer Stefan Thomas was given 7,002 Bitcoins as a reward for making a video explaining how the cryptocurrency works. At the time each Bitcoin was worth $2-6.
Mr. Thomas stored them away in his digital 'wallet' and forgot all about them. Currently, however, each Bitcoin is now worth $ 56,000, so the total is worth around $ 395 million.
Unfortunately, during the intervening decade, Mr. Thomas has forgotten the password to access his hard drive (which contains his private keys to the Bitcoins). He's already entered the wrong password eight times, and if his next two guesses are also incorrect, the hard drive will be encrypted and he'll never be able to get his hands on his $395m fortune.
"I would just be in bed and think about it”, he told the New York Times. "Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again“. He says the frustrating experience has put him off crypto currencies for good.
After reports of Mr Thomas’s dilemma appeared in international news sources, internet security expert Alex Stamas based at Stanford Internet Observatory said he could crack the password within six months in return for a 10 per cent fee. With such enormous sums of money at stake, he advised Mr Thomas and anyone else in a similar plight not to try guessing a password with the risk of being locked out permanently. “Take it to professionals to buy 20 keys and spend six months finding a side-channel”, Mr Stamos said on Twitter. “I’ll make it happen for 10 per cent. Call me”.
However, looking at Stefan Thomas's own Twitter account suggests he has not yet been able to access his fortune. Perhaps surprisingly, he seems remarkably positive about the whole affair, despite numerous tweets advising him to try "password123', 'admin', or '123456' to unlock his hard drive. Other people have tweeted to him, claiming that they know his password, having seen it in a vision or dream. He appears to take all these suggestions in good spirit.
The Guardian, 12 Jan 2021
Questions:
a) We all have so many passwords these days. Are you good at remembering your passwords?