Legendary Hacker Joe Grand Cracks 11-Year-Old Bitcoin Wallet 🔓

Joe Grand (aka Kingpin) pulled off another miracle. 🚀 The famous hardware hacking genius just unlocked a Bitcoin wallet that sat frozen for 11 years. The owner got back 43.6 BTC. Not bad.

The wallet had a strange history. Its owner used RoboForm for generating what seemed like a random password. They stored it as both the wallet passphrase and in some encrypted text file. Many hackers tried and failed. Grand didn't.

"RoboForm passwords look random. They're not," Grand said. Kind of surprising, really. The older versions had this weird flaw. They based passwords on time patterns instead of actual randomization. 🕒

Grand tackled the problem using some NSA-developed techniques. He played with the time variable. It worked. The wallet cracked open. Seems like another trophy for his already impressive collection of hacks. 💻

When he's not rescuing lost crypto, Grand runs his company, Grand Idea Studio. He teaches others too. There's this two-day training coming at FTSCon 2025. It's apparently his last European public training this year. 🛠️

Grand's background is fascinating. He was part of L0pht Heavy Industries. These guys testified before the U.S. Senate about cybersecurity stuff. Hackers advising the government? That was new back then. 🔐

This whole wallet recovery thing just confirms what people already knew. Grand solves puzzles others can't crack. It's not entirely clear how he keeps doing it. But he does. 🌕