A Chainanalysis report ensures that 20% of Bitcoins in circulation do not have an owner; That is, these cryptocurrencies are blocked in wallets for which the keys have been lost or forgotten.
One of the most cited cases when talking about this type of problem is that of James Howells, who He threw away a hard drive with the keys to a wallet and he was left with another identical album by mistake. The Welshman has been searching for 10 years in the local landfill, trying to find the hard drive that contains the keys to more than 200 million euros.
But Howells' case is just one more case. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people who have forgotten or lost their private keys. This is a “community” problem rather than a technical one, says Joe Grand, one of the most famous hackers in the world, better known by his nickname: Kingpin.
Who is Kingpin?
Joe Grand was part of the legendary hacker group “L0pht”, being its youngest member and was one of those who appeared before the United States Senate in 1998 to address the problem of piracy.
Since then, Grand has dedicated himself to giving talks and classes around the world. Until, in 2021, while going through an existential crisis, tired of 18-hour days working on the design of the famous passes for “Def Con” (the most important hacking event in the world), he went to him Dan Reich with a new challenge: a locked wallet that it was about to delete its content because the owner had forgotten his password.
A friend of Dan's had forgotten the password to the wallet that contained over $2M in Theta tokens. Of the 16 unlock attempts allowed by the wallet, 12 had already been used.
A hack with millions of views on YouTube
Grand accepted the challenge and, together with Reich, decided to document the entire process for the record. The video was uploaded to YouTube in January 2022 and, in three weeks, it exceeded 4 million views.
In the video, you can see in detail the complexity of the technical process and the way in which Grand manages to unlock the wallet, taking advantage of the fact that its software was not updated.
Off Spec: hackers who recover your cryptocurrencies
At that time, Grand and Reich discovered that people have problems with cryptocurrencies and wallets, since it is a new technology, which is not easy to use. After receiving hundreds of emails and messages from all over the world, they decided to create Off Spec, a company focused on hacking and recovering wallet passwords, both those of hardware like software ones.
Since its founding in 2021, Off Spec has managed to recover and release 2.000 M USD of blocked wallets.
As they explain on their own website, this type of work is not like what we see in the movies. It's not magic. It's not even glamorous. Hacking one of these wallets is a slow, expensive process that requires great precision. It's like solving a puzzle.
First of all, they collect all possible information about the wallet, from official documentation to searching hacker communities for vulnerabilities. They then analyze the device and carry out tests with identical devices, once they have all the information they need, they carry out the attack, this time on the original device, which can take the process for weeks or even months.
The Grand team works closely with the client, letting them observe and participate in the entire process, ask questions and learn about what they are doing. A decision they made to improve the transparency of the entire process.
