IronKey Maker was unable to release the locked € 260 million Bitcoin wallet even though it wanted to



Last week, programmer Stefan Thomas revealed that he only has two more attempts left to unlock a cryptocurrency wallet containing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin. In an interview with the New York Times, he explained that the private key of a wallet containing 7,000 Bitcoin is stuck on an IronKey encrypted USB drive, the password of which he has forgotten. After a bull run (or growth period) dating back to November, Bitcoin currently stands at a valuation of around €37,500, valuing unreachable holdings at around €260 million. The maker of the IronKey reader, Kingston Technology, has since confirmed that it has no power to help Thomas recover his private key, even if he wanted to. Kingston's entire line of encrypted USB drives, including the military-grade IronKey line with added tamper protections, allow a maximum of ten password attempts, after which the encryption key and data are erased, therefore they are not recoverable,” the spokesperson told TechRadar Pro. “The drive then forces a reformat and requires a new password to start over. This policy helps thwart potential brute force attacks. Kingston has no way to recover the data as expected. "

Bitcoin wallet tragedy

According to Kingston, this is not the first time a client has been blocked, or nearly so, from their encrypted drive. But there is no secret backdoor built into devices to prevent abuse by hackers, and there are no other alternatives either. “There is no backup password or alternative method other than the original password that was set by the user to recover the data. The default setting is ten attempts when the converters leave our factory,” the company explained. In some cases, customers require an even stricter approach to protect data stored on their encrypted drives. “We have top-tier companies, governments and the military asking for even lower numbers because their data protection needs are so sensitive,” the spokesperson added. In short, all Kingston can do to help customers avoid data loss is recommend "check keyboard for malfunction" before entering a password and recommend "all data be on removable USB storage as well." they are backed up elsewhere to protect against disk loss, theft, or corruption." While his situation is certainly unenviable, Thomas is not the first (and probably won't be the last) to lose a large amount of Bitcoin. In 2013, it was reported that a UK IT technician accidentally dumped a hard drive containing 7.500 Bitcoin, which was said to have been buried in a nearby landfill. The Quadriga crypto exchange also lost hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin after the untimely death of its CEO, Gerald Cotten, who was the only person with access to the wallets containing the funds. The reason why so much Bitcoin is lost is that the network is not monitored by a single entity, so there is no security mechanism to prevent loss. Decentralization is part of what draws a lot of people into the world of cryptocurrencies, but it also involves playing with fire to a degree. If crypto owners choose to keep their holdings in a non-custodial wallet, outside of an exchange, forgetting or losing the private key becomes a fatal mistake.

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