Posted on June 26, 2022 at 7:09 AM
White Hat Hacker Finds Only $105 In Bitcoin In An Attempt To Revolver Millions
A white hacker has revealed that he tried to recover millions in lost BTC but ended up recovering only a fraction of a BTC worth $105 from his efforts.
Hardware hacker and computer engineer Joe Grand is popular for helping people to recover their crypto from places that are difficult to access. He admitted that he spent several hours trying to hack a phone to retrieve the BTT stored in the device. However, the effort was not as fruitful as he would have hoped.
Grand Has Helped People Recover Their Lost Wallet
Grand, via a YouTube video, stated that he has traveled across cities in the US to potentially recover the millions of dollars in BTC available in the Samsung Galaxy SIII phone. The device was owned by Lavar, a local bus operator, who bought the crypto asset in July 2016 in a “super sketchy” way. He paid someone at a café and stored the crypto in a wallet on the phone. However, he misplaced the phone.
After recovering the device in 2021, Lavar could not recall the device’s swipe password, but he remembered that he set up an option to erase the data when several incorrect attempts were made.
After almost giving up on the process of recovering the crypto, a friend connected him with Grand from his YouTube videos. The white hack hacker made several attempts to bypass the security protocol and get into the memory of the device to recover the crypto.
Only $105 In Bitcoin Was Recovered
After some micro soldering work on the phone, the hacker downloaded the memory and discovered the access swipe pattern. However, when Lavar opened his MyCellium Bitcoin wallet, he found only 0.00300861 BTC, worth $105 at the time. However, it has even plummeted further to $62 at the time of writing.
While prying further, Grand discovered that Lavar bought $400 worth of BTC in 2016. But most of it was sent to a now-defunct crypto mixing service called BitBlender. The crypto mixing service was shut down in 2019. “I’m a little devastated. We didn’t make money, but we made new friends,” Kavar said.
Billions Of Dollars Worth Of Cryptocurrencies Are Lost Forever
The anonymous and decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies makes them very unique in every sense. Unlike traditional bank accounts where a holder who forgets their account details can easily retrieve them from the bank, the safety of crypto wallets is the sole responsibility of the holder. This means that once the holder cannot recall the keys or password, access to the account will be denied.
Many crypto holders have lost access to their physical devices that contain BTC over the years. It wasn’t important years ago when BTC was worth a few dollars. One of the most notable incidences was a Welsh man who discarded a disk hard drive containing 7,500 Bitcoins in 2013, which is now worth $150 million in today’s market.
But following the miraculous rise in the value of Bitcoin, many people have tried to retrieve their crypto wallets from lost or abandoned devices. In some cases, white hackers are called for assistance.
Some have succeeded in retrieving their Bitcoin passwords while many others failed. Many engineers and hackers that specialize in crypto recovery services have come to the aid of some of these sets of people that lost their keys.
Billions Of Dollars Worth Of Bitcoins Lost Due To Forgotten Keys
A report in the New York Times showed that about $140 billion in Bitcoin has not been claimed by their owners who forgot their keys. In line with the report, cryptocurrency data firm Chainalysis, in another report, stated that 20% of the 18.6 billion BTC mined in total are considered to be lost in wallets that have not been used in years.
There are several reports where hackers assisted Bitcoin users to crack their devices and regain their passwords. Another white hat hacker Chris Brooks has carved an occupation for him and his son to help people recover their lost crypto wallet passwords. He said many of the “lost” assets are not retrievably lost and they have assisted many people to regain access. Although some of their efforts have been fruitless, just like Grand, said they have recovered reasonable amounts in Bitcoin for some people.
