(Bad News?) Irish Police Crack First of 12 Bitcoin Wallets in $418M Drug

[zabzob]

This is a non-story. Somebody used a weak password and lost his money. Happens all the time. Nothing to do with bitcoin security, just cybersecurity 101 stuff

[LoyceV]

Somebody used a weak password and lost his money.

Most people's passwords can't withstand years of government resources The fact that only 1 out of 12 wallets got hacked, shows that the passwords weren't weak.

They should have used BIP38 for encryption, good luck with that!

[NotATether]

The article don't mention how this was done but if I had to guess I would say he had a wallet file that got recovered then bruteforced for using weak password? Not really a big deal. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn't done using the address alone if that's what you're implying.

Could be the only way, as 12-word phrases are theoretically impossible to brute-force. It was definitely a hashcat cracking rig that got a weak password.

If they had the 12 words or at least a part of those words, this event would not have made the news.

Apparently, the 12 wallets are private keys contained within a document. document was apparently password encrypted, and the government cracked the password to access the private keys.

Hrr drr... another person who stored private keys instead of seed phrases. When will they learn? 🤦🏽‍♂️

[asriloni]

For discussion: How is Bitcoin considered safe if the Government can now access and decrypt private keys?**

So you assume Irish police broke the cryptography? It's a very wild assumption to think bitcoin is no longer safe. Who knows Irish police was trying to find the puzzle for years, then they just found it. I can only guess they were trying to find about the information related to the keys for years, then they just complete it now. So it's not related to the broke of cryptography.

**(EDIT) Honestly, it's not completely clear if they literally broke Bitcoin's encryption, or busted into the wallet software and found the keys.

Your thoughts?

I don't think they broke cryptography. They're likely finding the key instead of crack it by themselves.

[Alphakilo]

The article don't mention how this was done but if I had to guess I would say he had a wallet file that got recovered then bruteforced for using weak password? Not really a big deal. Whatever it was, it definitely wasn't done using the address alone if that's what you're implying.

Could be the only way, as 12-word phrases are theoretically impossible to brute-force. It was definitely a hashcat cracking rig that got a weak password.

If they had the 12 words or at least a part of those words, this event would not have made the news.

Apparently, the 12 wallets are private keys contained within a document. document was apparently password encrypted, and the government cracked the password to access the private keys.

Hrr drr... another person who stored private keys instead of seed phrases. When will they learn? 🤦🏽‍♂️

Clearly, Bitcoin's encryption didn't break as to when Europol says they cracked the wallet. They probably found a backup or a digital footprint or weak password.
Bitcoin's front door protocol remains impenetrable and that's why it is highly adviced to use strong passwords, and encrypted digital backups, use a cold storage and something like multi- sig, your wallet and funds will be safe.

[Cricktor]

There's too much speculation for my taste due to lack of details also in the decrypto.co article.

No details what kind of wallet and what wallet software was involved and so on and so forth. Others and my "educated guess" is, they cracked a wallet encryption password. Unfortunately it's not more than a guess, because of lack of details. It's probably the least exotic guess or wild assumption.

What I find interesting, if the assumption holds water, is that the twelve wallets involved don't seem to share some wallet encryption passphrase similarity, which is not so common (well, it strongly depends how knowledgeable the creator is about password strength and security).

Collins created 12 wallets to store his growing Bitcoin fortune and recorded the private keys in a document hidden in a fishing rod case at a rented property in Co Galway. In interviews with gardaí, he claimed he never saw the case again after a break-in at his home, though reports indicated a clear-out of the property after his arrest may have resulted in the loss. The original seizure in 2019 was valued at $61 million (€53 million).

Apparently, the 12 wallets are private keys contained within a document. document was apparently password encrypted, and the government cracked the password to access the private keys.

Doesn't make much sense to me what the article says. Why would someone expose and record the private keys? It makes no sense if you don't use BIP38 encryption with a paperwallet e.g.

I don't know. Your conclusions seems a bit too far fetched for my taste. If it were like you say, the government would've gained access to all 6,000BTC, not only to 500BTC of the one wallet they cracked. Or am I missing something?


One thing to learn from this: you'd better have redundant secure backups of your wallets at at least two different places.  

[ZAINmalik75]

Countries are really having it easy in making Money from Bitcoin
Find a crime the owner has done
Seize their funds free money.
With the US holdings and what the Irish police were able to recover
If it was brute forced directly
They wouldn't have published it but kept it a secret until they have benefited more from it.

It is a huge con of using Bitcoin, so probably scammers and hackers should move away from this, it is better for us, for those retail investors who love to trade and invest in it. Because these hackers have made this industry look bad already know it is cleaning time. But they will still not stop, they will still be doing their harmful work, and will be affecting the lives of innocent people.

But in this case, Collins did not scam or hack anyone, he made money illegally and then bought bitcoin with that money so that is also illegal. They can do whatever they want now, even if he had kept that money in fiat or gold, they would have eventually found it out, but with Bitcoin, it took them ages to get their hands on it.

By the way a lot is being changed in this story, I thought they recovered the fish rod in which he hid the recovery phrase. Now they say they decrypted it? It does not make any sense.

[WellRozey]

There is no way that anyone can get  bitcoin private key straight from its address alone, this is also a criminal case and yet they will have ways to crack it in the end, if the criminals are in their captivity then anything is possible, you can say that they are scaring people that Bitcoin can actually be cracked but I say that this is a warning to all criminals that believe they can escape with their illegal money using Bitcoin.

[Hamza2424]

By the way a lot is being changed in this story, I thought they recovered the fish rod in which he hid the recovery phrase. Now they say they decrypted it? It does not make any sense.

Bro, you have heard the right story, it has not changed, just the document they found in that fishing rod contained the keys to 12 wallets, and that document was encrypted, locked with a password, so they must have brute forced that device or storage device he must have used. That's why the whole story sounds very confusing. You should check this reply of Hugeblack:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5578427.msg66555377#msg66555377

He has already mentioned what happened. So OP was curious about the security of Bitcoin, while it was never about it. Every single time someone gets their hands on others' bitcoins, they do it by finding a vulnerability in the third party system they have been using.

[Sulegzy39]

There is no way that anyone can get  bitcoin private key straight from its address alone, this is also a criminal case and yet they will have ways to crack it in the end, if the criminals are in their captivity then anything is possible, you can say that they are scaring people that Bitcoin can actually be cracked but I say that this is a warning to all criminals that believe they can escape with their illegal money using Bitcoin.

He's previously mentioned what happened. So the OP was wondering about Bitcoin's security, even though it was never mentioned. Every time someone gets their hands on other people's bitcoins, they do it by exploiting a flaw in the third-party system they were utilizing.


Posted: Today, 07:24:35 PM Post by: WellRozeyThere is no way that anyone can obtain a bitcoin private key solely from its address; this is also a criminal case, and they will find ways to crack it in the end; if the criminals are in captivity, anything is possible; you could argue that they are scaring people that Bitcoin can be cracked, but I say that this is a warning to all criminals who believe they can escape with their illegal money using Bitcoin.

[shinratensei_]

Your thoughts?

That’s not bad news - don’t make a big deal out of something that’s actually quite ordinary. Right now, there’s no "tool" capable of decrypting a Bitcoin seed phrase. As people here have said, all they’re doing is brute-forcing wallet file, which isn’t impossible. Just ignore it, it’s not something you need to be so afraid of.

If there is such tool, the dorman bitcoin would've moved and everything will be in chaos. So far nothing happened and the market apparently consider this as just another ordinary news about seizing and nothing more.
People are getting overly paranoid over the fact that technical term could be used interchangably in news like this because the writer might not be too well versed in cryptography.