Bitcoin Forum

Hackers Are Trying To Break Into This Bitcoin Wallet Holding $690 Million
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bv8k4v/hackers-are-trying-to-break-into-this-bitcoin-wallet-holding-dollar690-million

https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/address/1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx

I'm not sure if this is a real wallet or if this article is an advertisement for RaidForums.

I read about this on cointelegraph few days ago, the wallet could be real. But, it is now related to the fact that without knowing the private key of a wallet, that brute-forcing can only be a waste of time as no one can brute-force a wallet private key for now. Also, on the new, it is said that although it may be impossible to break through the wallet for now but possibly quantum computer with advance features will be able to break through in a way the private key will be revealed. Now that a recent quantum computer is used to calculate what can not be calculated in 10 years in just three minutes, this makes quantum computer to be a topic of discussion in relationship to bitcoin.

That's a completely worthless article not worth being mentioned.

Those "Hackers" do not hack anything. They are trying to bruteforce a password.
Thats's nothing new, wallets are being traded here all the time.

Further, no one can be sure that this wallet indeed holds the private keys. I am pretty sure that a wallet can be manipulated in such a way.
We can observe this all the time here, where people "lost their password", but in reality just bought a wallet file.


It is disappointing to see what kind of articles get published.

The idea of quantum computer its there since 1981, but now we are a big step forward to make it happen, who knows..

There was also a recent tweet on Twitter asking to Microsoft for a Quantum Computer. Man I cant imagine the price for 1 Quantum Computer. I it going to be a very powerful computer and will be the god of brute forcing wallets if ever hackers gets their hands to it.

Brute-forcing to crack the private key isn't going to work. You need quantum computers for this, and if the rumour is true then although it may seem impossible to get the private keys for now in the near future this might well become a probability.

Given the stake is so high, several individual might pull together and split the reward, after all the amount is high enough to lead to different team formations alining up to the same goal.

I'd highly recommend you both to actually read about quantum computers and what they can achieve.
They are not magic machines.

There are quantum algorithms which do decrease the search space for specific mathematical problems, yes.
But they can not just easily crack and bruteforce everything.

This is dangerous sciolism being spread by unaware people.

These hackers out of all people should know that brute-forcing a wallet password is well near impossible, and so all they do when they find such files is sell them for a few thousand bucks to others who want to break it. So the hackers just have to find encypted wallet.dat files around the web, maybe even fake the balance like the article stated, and get a revenue stream from selling those wallets.

The people buying those wallets and trying to break it open are operating at a loss, they lose not only the money needed to buy access the wallet but also the elecricity expenses from running the rig, not to mention that since access to the wallet is being sold (the seller is under no obligaion to delete his copy), someone else could crack it while he's brute forcing it and poof: there goes the asset they payed for. Triple loss for them.

But like bob123 said this story isn't significant at all. These things happen all the time.


Do you guys really think hackers will be allowed legitimate access to quantum computers?

I'm pretty sure it's a genuine address, I checked it in an explorer. And I don't think it's an advertisement for the forum; it's only mentioned once. And Bitcointalk is discussed as well.

How can one be so sure that it's for that wallet, though? Just because it's posted like that? It can be a prank or something.  

The article may not be very useful, but it talks about a market where many wallet.dat are sold.
If it is not forbidden to trade wallets on this forum, then let buyers know that before them hundreds or thousands of users with large computing power tried to crack the password before them.
Perhaps experienced users will not be interested in this topic, but beginners will constantly waste their time and money.

It is not like every wallet sold is a legit wallet with a forgot password.
Those wallet files are being faked to display a large sum of BTC.

There simply is no password which will give the user access to those shown BTC.

Of course that's now only referring to the wallet sales on this (or other) forums and not on the rare cases where someone actually indeed lost the password and now sells this wallet file.
Unfortunately a lot of people are getting scammed by this.

Selling an encrypted wallet with supposedly high amount of coins is a very old scam, from time to time it gets posted on this forum too. The journalists just proved their illiteracy, with this kind of work they might as well start advertising Bitcoin doubling scams with a nice headline "kind strangers offer Bitcoiners to double their coins for free!".

But would anyone sell their wallet with a forgotten password even with 10 bitcoins for $ 20 or $ 100?
All that I have seen is either stolen wallets to which it is impossible to find a password, or fake, but in fact the user will still lose his time and money.

Exactly right, there are too many scenarios like this, and the fact I saw many threads that they are offering service like cracking key and pass through wallet.dat, but the fact that it is impossible to hack an encrypted wallet if that was I'm not mistaken but this is relatively incident.

The article is unclear information, even the author didn't know if that has come from the wallet.dat file or just a fake one.

Scammers these days will also struggle of exchanging their scammed crypto to a centralized exchange because once that is linked as a scam wallet. It can be tracked by bitcoin scam tracking services.

There must always be ongoing attempts to break into very rich Bitcoin wallets. This is not big news already. For all I know, there must be hackers or online robbers trying to break into exchange wallets, individual wallets, and even wallets of famous Bitcoin personalities including Satoshi. Robbers gonna rob.

And they say it's nothing complicated (I mean the procedure) so obviously someone played around a bit and made a story out of nothing. And even if the wallet is real, any slightly more complicated password makes it virtually impenetrable for today's computers. But if some hackers really think there's something there, let them just play with that crypto wallet - they'll have less time for some other things, like hacking a crypto exchanges or distributing crypto malware.

People praising quantum computer as if it needs a second to break cryptography haha

Theoretically, quantum computer can break bitcoin blockchain if it can derive the private key in less than 5 minutes, which I don't think we computer scientists can't do in the next 5 to 10 years.

Indeed.

And the message to them is: let them try harder because it's nearly impossible for any machine to break Bitcoin wallet. Sometimes when the issue of breaking into wallet arise many get negative vibes, the quantum computers to my understanding can take years before this can be a reality(if only Satoshi allows it to happen). Those algorithms aren't just what can break without a heavy price paid, like what can be done before a transaction can be reverse(connect all nodes). Maybe this can be actualize when all Bitcoin might have been mined IMO.

calling people who are trying to brute force a private key by having only the address "hackers" is an insult to hackers and computer programmers and to math... they are just newbies who have no understanding of cryptography nor size of numbers.
if there were even a teeny tiny chance of something like this happening, bitcoin and a lot of other things on the internet including banking system would have died.

of course this lack of knowledge is also being abused by a different type of scammers selling them fake wallet files, fake or even malicious programs to run,...

The wallet mentioned is genuine and the bulk number of coins moved into the wallet around the Mt Gox era and the wallet is still active and getting dust amount for a long time and the recent one was this August.

There is an old thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=249718.0) in speculation that mentions this address

As mentioned in the article it is possible that scammers are trying to sell the DAT file editing to look like the hot wallet.

If this is some sort of a puzzle which is occasionally being provided by some people for a cash prize then I would have understand. However, this is just a random address which happen to carry millions of $ worth of bitcoins in it and people are just blindly trying their luck to brute-force the private key. It can happen although the odds are just infinitesimally small with the amount of processing power and the current spec of the processors that we in this day and age.

I'd be surprised if they were able to get something off of what they're doing but this is just some guys thinking they have figured something out which the world hasn't yet.

If it's about decrypting the wallet, Vice is right that it's next to impossible. But bob123 is probably right that they're just trying to get the password right. If the 2FA was enabled, even a password would not help them to get the money. I don't understand why people do such things, to be honest, because not only it's a low-probability win, it's also morally wrong. So I hope they won't succeed in this venue, and the money will remain in the wallet (if the story is even true). It could be news if they already got in, but since it's just about attempts, I don't understand why it's worthy of an article.

I know, that's why I'm saddened to people who are getting their hopes up with that DAT file without knowing the possible hardships that could happen. Just like what Brewmaster said, the lack of knowledge meaning someone could take advantage of this. It's like The Jackpot Awaits. A gimmicked game, just like in carnivals.

You must be aware that there are already a number of successful attempts to break into rich Bitcoin wallets. How many centralized exchanges have fallen victim to online robbers? A lot. These online robbers have indeed tried harder and got a few steps ahead of these exchanges' security and got their Bitcoins.

Forget about Satoshi. He's gone now. It is not anymore in his hands whether quantum computing would end up sufficient enough to break into Bitcoin wallets or not.

I read about it some days back and even it was titled a bounty. I guessed the owner of the wallet himself posted it in other to send a message and unleashed the community of hackers on himself so there is nothing wrong about this. Its a competition and a rat race waiting for who will get to the finish line and take the prize.

Success usually involves some less secure situations.
People who hold coins on older p2pk, or on addresses that have been spent from and reveal their public point, are advised to transfer their coins to a more modern location ASAP.

I think most of the successfully cracked addresses has been done because of social hacking or trojan, and not pass brute forcing.

Yes, not brute forcing. But regardless, it means lost or robbed Bitcoins. So it does not matter whether it is through brute forcing or through hacks or phishing or a virus. Whatever the means the Bitcoin was taken without consent, the point is that there is a real threat at hand all the time as in always, 24/7.

It sure is a big wallet but not the only one around the Internet. I remember threads on this forum where people were asking for help getting into their wallets. There are many smaller wallet.dat files circulating around the Internet and I haven't heard of a single case where someone managed to find the password.
Technically if someone was dumb and put a short password with no capital letters or numbers you could bruteforce it so it's not a completely futile attempt. Even if it takes a year of running the program 24/7 one should be able to do it. I think that it's only a mater of time before someone does it. Whether finding the password will really give them access to the money is a different matter.


Theoretically there's life on other planets and it's possible to warp space and travel to distant galaxies ;)

Yes but there is a lot of awkwardness rotating around that specific address.
When you calculate the uncompressed address from that public key and you want to look up it's balance on google, you get something extraordinary.
This is not by accident.

https://i.ibb.co/whcrstF/islands.png (https://ibb.co/4R1gdkn)

It can't be more silly. I think those people should not even be called as hackers since even an average bitcoin holder knows that brute forcing a wallet is a complete waste. If it were to be a real hackers then they would rather try finding and compromising the device on which the wallet was previously used and then decrypting the private key from the device. Anyway, articles like these have been previously posted on this forum but nobody actually got anywhere with brute forcing.

Yes scammers make good use of it to take advantage of the ignorance of others who believe in fake wallet files, fake programs etc that scammers sell.
Even scams like this are quite classic and are done probably regularly by scammers.

Many feel capable of hacking wallets with a large number of bitcoins, but that's just gibberish and they are just hackers who don't understand cryptography. It is impossible to hack the private key of bitcoin, except by means of a social attack on the owner of the wallet.

It's not impossible, in fact it is inevitable.
Bitcoin only has one enemy: Time
Given enough time a collision will take place with a mathematical certainty.
This does not mean that it is feasible.
The energy and time needed to reverse engineer a key are astronomical.
But that does not mean that it is impossible.

Also i have said it before, cases vary from situation to situation.
I know that there were key's that were already discovered in the lower 64 bit spectrum.
Or take for example the many sha256 hacked brain wallets.
I also know that there are still many robots online that will monitor these wallets and instantly absorb any and all satoshi that arrives there.

You can run around shouting impossible all day long, but it has already been done before and many times actually,
The thing is that these events all happened in less secure situations.
So its fair to say that it is unfeasible under normal strong cryptographic circumstances.
But not impossible it just boils down to a combination of time energy hardware and luck.

You should read the OP more carefully.
It is not about bruteforcing private keys, but about bruteforcing the password of a wallet.dat file.

Those two things are completely different. Bruteforcing a private key is not feasible, yes indeed. But cracking a password can be possible. It purely depends on the strength of the password.




Brain wallets are cracked because people are dumb and the entropy is low enough to be bruteforced.
There already have been quite some brain wallets emptied which were derived from the rockyou.txt password list (most used passwords).

Bruteforcing private keys is (and won't be) feasible.

bruteforcing a password is really possible. but still a very difficult job for hackers.
 on the other hand, can a quantum computer do the trick of getting that pw easily? because if we are talking millions of dollars here, someone who has access with quantum computers may try this decrypting the pw. but first, is the wallet.dat file circulating the real one? i guess just as fake as it can be.

It is clickbait and spreading fear. However, what would presumably occur is the IRS might begin following the movements of some addresses in bitcoin's richlist and their transactions.

Can the government order an exchange to freeze the account if it received a transaction from one of the marked addresses in the richlist?

These are not called actually hackers, these are some crackers trying to bruteforce the passwords using some kinda super strong computer. Actually the there is nothing new here, the idea of quantum computer was made long time ago but the thing is the price for the assembling quantum computer is just crazy and in my own idea none will ever create such computer just for bruteforceing some bitcoin wallet. So, in the current stage of technology it doesn't worth of creating such computer.

I don't think they're going to be successful in doing so.
It's true bitcoin's algorithm will be outdated in future but it will take at least 100-200 more years.

I wonder why hackers hope that the password will fit from the dictionary, because there is most likely some special and complex secret.
For example one or two sentences from a book

What's wrong with simply bootstrapping your wallet? Imagine that you need to create a computer in order to safely open any bitcoin wallet and withdraw funds from it. Given the capitalization of bitcoin today, this is a very solid and unobvious investment. As you wrote, no one will even think about it - this is another plus in order to implement it.

technically, you don't decrypt a wallet file password but you brute force it which is totally based on luck and the length/complexity of the password.

I am sure the wallet file is fake and all this article is just bs. Just take a look at the photo they posted, the member who shared the file is a newbie on that hackers forum. Why should any one trust him knowing that there is no way to tell for sure if the encrypted private key is the one for the address in question.

Hello everyone :), these hackers lately are working very hard to steal information, yesterday on my instagram I published a news about it in which three out of ten companies riceben cyberattacks daily and now I read that some pirates want to get in and steal that wallet that they have a good sum of money I do believe it is real, greetings to all 8) @danielgrossoweb