By Solomon Odunayo
A man recently shared the story of how he lost the private keys to an encrypted file containing $300,000 of Bitcoin (BTC), and how a professional cryptographer was able to crack the encrypted file for the successful recovery of the Bitcoin holdings.
According to the account of the man, in 2016, when the cryptocurrency market was seriously hit by bears, the man purchased about $10,000 to $15,000 of Bitcoin (BTC).
After the purchase, he placed the private keys in an encrypted file. Unfortunately, he lost the password to the file. The value of the Bitcoin he lost access to has now risen to $300,000. many would have thought he lost the huge sum of funds forever, but that was not the case.
The Man Gains Access to His Bitcoin (BTC) Holdings
Luckily, the man regained access to his private keys, but with the help of a man named Mike Stay, a professional cryptographer with special skill in breaking encrypted files.
Mike Stay informed him that it would take approximately a year for Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) farm to break the encryption. This is because there would be 2^73 keys to test, and the cost of the operation is $100,000. The man agreed due to the worth of Bitcoin (BTC) at stake.
To make the problem half-solved, the original laptop is still with the man and he still knew the exact time the file was encrypted.
Howbeit, Mike Stay still had to carry out several complex processes, which included alteration of all his algorithms and fixing some errors.
As soon as the algorithms started working properly, the cracking of the encryption file for the recovery of the $300,000 worth of Bitcoin (BTC) only took 1 day.
Conclusively, private keys’ recovery is not one of the easiest tasks in computing. Many cryptocurrency holders have lost their passwords with a huge sum of funds, but little came back with the testimony of a successful recovery.