Man finally recovers his $3 million Bitcoin wallet after forgetting password for 11 years

A man who lost the password to his crypto wallet, which contained Bitcoins now worth $3 million, was able to recover the full amount thanks to the help of two researchers,

Michael told Wired that he stored 43.6 Bitcoins in a password-protected digital wallet, secured with a password generated using the RoboForm password manager. He then stored that password in a file encrypted with a tool called TrueCrypt, choosing not to store it with RoboForm due to security concerns.

However, the file got corrupted and Michael lost access to the crypto, and in the hopes of getting it back, he contacted hacker and researcher Joe Grand in 2022 who previously helped people recover their lost crypto.

Grand tapped a friend named Bruno to assist with cracking RoboForm’s software. They spent months reverse-engineering the version of the RoboForm program that Michael had used in 2013 and discovered that the random number generator used to generate passwords in that version had a flaw.

The random passwords it generated were tied to the date and time on the user’s computer, making them predictable. If you knew the date, time, and other parameters, you could predict any password that would have been generated at a specific date and time in the past. However, Michael didn’t remember exactly when he had created his password.

The researchers were, however, able to find out that he moved Bitcoin into his wallet on April 13, 2013. By testing specific time parameters, they tested numerous passwords until they found the correct one – a password created on May 15, 2013.

Grand and Bruno took a percentage of the Bitcoins, worth $38,000 per coin, and gave Michael the password to access the rest. He waited until the price rose to $62,000 per coin, sold some of them, and now has 30 Bitcoins left, worth $3 million.