Two Password Attempts Away From Losing $620 Million

[btc78]

This is not possible. IronKey USB is a hardware-encrypted flash drive with AES 256-bit encryption and it has brute-force lockout. It's not possible to backup or clone a hardware so he only has 2 shots and if he misses both tries with a wrong password he will lose everything no questions asked.

the security of the hardware is incredible and really makes sure that no one else can mess with it but sometimes it may include even yourself when you are not careful this just shows that it is indeed secure but it also tells us that we can’t be too complacent

the password has to be backed up somewhere safe

[CryptoYar]

I agree with the idea that the most important lesson is rule that states that you lose your keys, you lose your coins because there is no reset password button on the Bitcoin as on the bank. Extra part to this story is that Unciphered says that they can now hack drive to give him infinite guesses, but as of late 2025, Stefan has turned down their help because he already made deals with other experts and has reached state of mental peace after ten years of stress. This loss is actually helpful to other people since lost coins make all other Bitcoin more valuable and rare and fact that he made mistake has taught world to use Multi-Sig wallets, which need more than one key to unlock, so that loss of one device will never cause such huge tragedy again.

[FortuneFollower]

When you look out for your custody, there may be cases like these, but they are usually entirely subject because of yourself.

We need to have many ways to recover our phrases or passwords.

[Lida93]

All we can do is to learn from such , by keeping one keys safe because a time will come when others are still going to post things like this , stating (I bought a certain amount of bitcoin in the year 2023 , I misplaced the key) . So we should be careful so that won’t be us , I just hope Stefan Thomas will be able to access his coins again .

More reasons to have our keys separately safe kept in different secured locations (at least 2-3 places) as there's no way someone would be losing the keys at different locations simultaneously or even forgetting the 3 locations you have them kept, it's relatively impossible. I believe with the safe ideas on how to protect and keep our keys it won't be that dripping with the number of losses in future as we hearing it currently.

So Thomas just has to wait. Technology advances, and things that are secure today may be obsolete in the future.

Fervently hoped he should still be alive by then as it is that we don't know when such technology may be possible.

[coolcoinz]

But he refuses, citing:

Thomas had already made a “handshake deal” with two other cracking teams a year earlier, he explained. In an effort to prevent the two teams from competing, he had offered each a portion of the proceeds if either one could unlock the drive. And he remains committed, even a year later, to giving those teams more time to work on the problem before he brings in anyone else—even though neither of the teams has shown any sign of pulling off the decryption trick that Unciphered has already accomplished.

https://www.wired.com/story/unciphered-ironkey-password-cracking-bitcoin/

That's just stupid.

Logic dictates that you choose the company that can prove they're able to recover the coins and no handshake deals are valid. Furthermore he should negotiate and deal with the company that not only possesses the required knowledge and is the most trustworthy, but also the one that offers to take the smallest % of the funds.
He's acting strangely in this matter, like he's more interested in getting attention than his money.

In his place, I'd arrange a meeting between all the companies that want to do it and ask them to show how they're planning to do it and if they had experimented with this exact model before.

[asriloni]

Hoping him to be able to access his bitcoin is too good to be true. It needs trillions of tries in order to crack it, yet no guarantee it will work too. If i were him, i'd rather sell it for a few hundreds thousand usd, and let others to do whatever they can to crack it, but i get money in return instead of keeping it.

However, it also means 620 millions worth of BTC already locked forever, and it's deflating the supply of Bitcoin. It sounds good too.  

[I_Anime]

This is not possible. IronKey USB is a hardware-encrypted flash drive with AES 256-bit encryption and it has brute-force lockout. It's not possible to backup or clone a hardware so he only has 2 shots and if he misses both tries with a wrong password he will lose everything no questions asked.

the security of the hardware is incredible and really makes sure that no one else can mess with it but sometimes it may include even yourself when you are not careful this just shows that it is indeed secure but it also tells us that we can’t be too complacent

the password has to be backed up somewhere safe

Most folk usually make such mistake of not backing up their keys  because of ignorance, like when I was still new in the crypto space I literally loss alot of wallet all because of ignorance, because I didn’t know the value of seed phrase then but lucky me I didn’t have much asset in most of the wallet , but was still sad though but I had to learn the hard way, that’s why is best to learn from others story ( like  Stefan story which is actually sad ngl) .

[Ahli38]

This is worth a documentary or perhaps even a movie. The plot seems better than Jennifer Garner's "One Attempt Remaining", which is also focused on a forgotten password that would unlock millions worth of crypto. Plus it's true to life.

It seems Stefan isn't desperate. He's probably optimistic that the teams he's partnered with will be able to recover the password for him. It's been more than a year with no positive result yet, but he's still refusing Unciphered's offer to get onboard. Perhaps the confidence is still there. Once lost, he still has remaining options. It seems he'll get his coins back, or so I hope. This is also a test to IronKey's security features.

I personally don't think Stefan's story is worthy of a feature film currently. The story hasn't been fully revealed yet. And I think it will be complete when Stefan successfully recovers his wallet. So I personally believe the film would be more engaging or even people would prefer to see a film with a climax rather than an anti-climax. And it would also make people aware of the importance of maintaining a Bitcoin wallet without carelessness.

[TastyChillySauce00]

2 attempts left before lock out is too small of a chance to get it right. His 8 early attempts has shown that he kinda forgot the password for real.
I'm wondering if he just gonna use the 2 attempts left or just pay people to tinker with the hardware and recover what is inside.

Seems pretty stressful scenario, imagine 2 attempts away from losing entire $620 million. That money could've retired his bloodline.

[taufik123]

-snip-
In his place, I'd arrange a meeting between all the companies that want to do it and ask them to show how they're planning to do it and if they had experimented with this exact model before.

It is arranged for an official meeting that has been agreed upon by all parties, because this will be important whether each company that proposes to do cracking is sufficiently trusted or just nonsense.

But, before going too far, whether you can't apply directly to the Ironkey USB company as the owner of the product,
of course, you know better how the security architecture applied to ironkey, rather than using a third party that is not necessarily trustworthy.

For some reason there is always this kind of story, losing access to thousands of Bitcoins that ultimately don't find a bright spot at all.
When Bitcoin was initially considered just a worthless digital coin or only valued with a slice of pizza.

Bitcoin is now a treasure that will make anyone who owned it in the past and opened it now become suddenly rich because of its increasingly high price.

[Maus0728]

2 attempts left before lock out is too small of a chance to get it right. His 8 early attempts has shown that he kinda forgot the password for real.
I'm wondering if he just gonna use the 2 attempts left or just pay people to tinker with the hardware and recover what is inside.

Seems pretty stressful scenario, imagine 2 attempts away from losing entire $620 million. That money could've retired his bloodline.

It will be difficult if not impossible because Ironkey is a really strong encryption and any tinkering that are borderline brute force is going to be really lock it entirely making any attempt totally impossible. It really sucks that people have to suffer this problem and I hope that many of us learn a lesson or two about this story, it hasn't happen to me yet but I can feel the frustration and desperation to get that money out.

[bitbollo]

nowadays, we fell very smart to not have lose our coins on 2011 forgetting a private key or a password somewhere.
even we think that store bitcoin has been everytime easy for everyone, full of guides like nowadays, including easy tutorials!
also we have really clear now THE VALUE (not only economic) of these coins. would it be the same at that time? are you sure you have saved all info from 15 years ago?

[avp2306]

nowadays, we fell very smart to not have lose our coins on 2011 forgetting a private key or a password somewhere.
even we think that store bitcoin has been everytime easy for everyone, full of guides like nowadays, including easy tutorials!
also we have really clear now THE VALUE (not only economic) of these coins. would it be the same at that time? are you sure you have saved all info from 15 years ago?

We try to be smart for handling our funds not to lose it because we know it has a value, but way back before especially on year since Bitcoin created up to the year 2011 situation is so different. Bitcoin does not have value compare as what we can see today. Most of people using it just want to have fun or use it for experimental purposes. Majority don't pay much attention in this coin before. No other technical information on how people can save their password that's why its really common for old users to lose their password or their private keys.

If Bitcoin has strong volume and value before, for sure that majority of old holders would provably try everything to make sure that their wallets and funds safe.

[zabzob]

This story reminds me of that guy who is still looking for his 8k btc at the bottom of a landfill because the hard drive with his keys on it got tossed in the trash (possibly by himself, although he blamed his girlfriend for it). Probably way more crypto is lost through owners loosing their keys than through theft.

[headingnorth]

As I have been saying for years it is bad advice and bad practice to keep only an offline copy of your seedphrase.
 
You hear countless stories like this of people losing the piece of paper that they wrote their seedphrase on.
Literally millions of bitcoins have been lost in that way.

But not once have I ever heard of anyone getting their seedphrase stolen because they kept it online.
In theory you should always keep your seedphrase offline to avoid being hacked but in reality that rarely if ever happens
(especially if a passphrase is used).

There is a difference between the theory and the reality. I prefer to deal with the real world.

[Bastketsrus]

Knowing that he had used 8 out of 10 attempts to open the USB, I knew how he felt, he must have felt frustrated and anxious, because he was so close to failure and his encryption key could be destroyed at any time and make it useless. But that's the risk of choosing such a complicated and very secure storage like that USB, but maybe he used to see that Bitcoin should be stored in such a secure storage, even though it ended up being a burden for him.

That situation really shows the trade-off with extreme security. When you go for something very complex, it can protect you well, but it also adds a lot of stress when things go wrong. Bitcoin storage should be secure, yes, but it also needs to be practical so it doesn’t turn into a burden for the owner.