Attack of the cryptidiots: One wants Bitcoin-flush hard drive he threw out in 2013 back, the other lost USB stick password
- Reference: 1610647151
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/01/14/attack_of_the_cryptidiots/
- Source link:
James Howells from Newport, Wales, must have been living a tortured existence these last seven years or so, first popping up in 2013 [1]when he told the BBC that he mistakenly chucked out a hard drive containing 7,500 Bitcoin that he'd obtained four years earlier for a steal.
[2]
Towards the end of that year, a single unit of the cryptocurrency hit $1,000 in value so naturally he was feeling a little foolish. If true, that was $7.5m gone.
"I kept the hard drive in a drawer in my office for three years without a second thought – totally forgot about Bitcoin altogether. I had been distracted by family life and moving house," Howells told the Beeb.
[3]
"Fast forward to 2013 which is when I had a clearout of my old IT equipment – I hadn't used this drive for over three years, I believed I'd taken everything off it... so it got thrown in the bin."
He headed to the landfill where he was told items "sent to landfill three or four months ago could be three to five feet deep" so that kicked his hopes into the long grass.
Now that the $7.5m is now worth almost $300m, Howells has [4]resurfaced once more to insist that his local council allow him to excavate the tip in search for the mythical hard drive, offering the authority a cut of his fortune for the trouble.
The council said no. A spokeswoman told the BBC again: "Newport City Council has been contacted a number of times since 2013 about the possibility of retrieving a piece of IT hardware said to contain Bitcoins.
"The first time was several months after Mr Howells first realised the hardware was missing.
"The council has told Mr Howells on a number of occasions that excavation is not possible under our licencing permit and excavation itself would have a huge environmental impact on the surrounding area.
"The cost of digging up the landfill, storing and treating the waste could run into millions of pounds – without any guarantee of either finding it or it still being in working order."
Lost the piece of paper
In related news, a couple of days ago Britain's The Sun newspaper [5]ran a yarn about a "computer programmer" who had 7,002 Bitcoin on an IronKey encrypted USB stick, which he received for an animation job in 2011.
Today that's worth $277m. The only problem is that he supposedly "lost the piece of paper on which he wrote his password" and the storage device allows for 10 attempts before rendering its contents irretrievable. He's on try number eight.
San Francisco resident Stefan Thomas told the red top: "I would just lay in bed and think about it. Then I'd go to the computer with some new strategy and it wouldn't work and I'd be desperate again."
We're guessing "123456" isn't it.
He has placed the drive in "a secure facility" until some manner of cracking it comes to light "for my own sanity".
The Register has little sympathy for the two men's plight. First of all, [6]e-waste is an environmental catastrophe . You probably shouldn't put hard drives and the like in general waste without checking that parts of it can't be recycled or otherwise safely disposed of. Howells also needs to know when to give up if the HDD could have already been five foot deep all those years ago. Not only is there no guarantee of finding it, there's also no guarantee he'd find it intact or the data recoverable – meaning the whole operation would more than likely be a fool's errand from the start.
Stefan, on the other hand... well, IT professionals should know better. OK, in some ways writing down a password then keeping it in a safe place is more secure than using one of the dime-a-dozen password managers out there. You can't hack a piece of paper, but it's not a particularly resilient storage medium if you leave it in your back pocket then put your jeans through the wash.
[7]
To conclude: LOL. ®
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[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-25134289
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_bootnotes/front&sz=300x250&tile=2&c=2YADNAyrD4V7AMdEWa40NUAAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_bootnotes/front&sz=300x250%7C300x252%7C300x600&tile=3&c=33YADNAyrD4V7AMdEWa40NUAAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-55658942
[5] https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/13725511/computer-programmer-two-guesses-password-180million/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/07/02/united_nations_warns_of_global_ewaste_wave/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_bootnotes/front&sz=300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251&tile=4&c=44YADNAyrD4V7AMdEWa40NUAAAAI8&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Don't ever write down your password on a piece of paper
No, risk of misplacing one or the other is still too high. Write the password on the USB drive with indelible ink. Just like on my bank card.
At EvilGardenGnome...
When you go out into my back yard to shoot the birds out of my trees, could you please stop bathing in the bird bath? The soap residue is making it difficult for me to read the passwords I've left in the bottom of the basin. Use the dog's water dish, she never uses it anymore. Thanks.
*Wanders off happily whistling a jaunty song about cryptidiots*
Re: Don't ever write down your password on a piece of paper
I don't write passwords down because people know that written passwords are passwords, instead I have posters on the wall that have phrases - looking up now, if I need a new password I could use InFlandersfieldsthepoppiesblow, or TheMilitaryAlphabet, I've always had those pinned to the wall.
and I felt bad
just last night I mistakenly spent 40 power crystals in game on a tablet because I fat fingered. It will take a couple weeks to earn them back.
Just get the password tattooed in reverse and upside down on the inside of your lower lip... Genius! Then kill the tattoo artist. Just joking!
Would a hard drive that had been living under several feet of rotting waste for 7 years would not now just be a rusty mess even if they could find it? And that is assuming its not be crushed by the compactor in the back of the refuse truck or those bulldozer with spiky metal wheels they use to flatten down the landfill.
Isn’t this just the modern (modern?) equivalent...
.. of lamenting throwing out or not keeping intact that original Furby or Tamagotchi?
I sold my single Bitcoin some years ago for $100 profit and was pretty pleased. They’re so slow and actually hard to sell that I’d probably be losing sleep how to offload the damn thing before it dropped $10K in value. I actually ended up buying Amazon vouchers because any other way of offloading was too convoluted. I’m sure most people making money in this market are leveraged trading rather than ever owning a coin.
Re: Isn’t this just the modern (modern?) equivalent...
If the last few years have shown anything, it is that you should control your own wallet rather than trusting the keys to someone else. Agree that it's not too easy to sell, but a lot simpler than shares!
Re: Isn’t this just the modern (modern?) equivalent...
Leveraged trading on popular platforms is scarily easy. More like using a complex betting site than “real” trading :/
Hurrah for screen readers!
"Cryptidiots" sounds like "crypt titties". I wondered what ElReg was doing writing about mummy boobs. =-)p
Am I mis-understanding Bitcoin or should these people have kept a backup (or several) of data that they believed was worth many thousands of pounds?
I realise that the clever blockchain crap means you can't just print money by copying the data, but you can at least protect the money you've got, no?
You can. The thing is, back when they got the Bitcoins they weren't worth thousands of pounds, so they didn't bother to back them up. Now they wish they had.
Shirley, the first thing the cryptidiot with the USB drive should do is to take an image of the entire drive - several times - then work on the image and preserve the original drive and its contents untouched.
Or am I being naive?
Not a traditional USB drive
The ironkey is NOT like a traditional USB drive. Imaging the drive would yield nothing since traditional brute-forcing the encryption used would take a very long time even with plentiful computing resources. The actual decryption key is generated and stored inside the chip, and is based on locally-generated entropy as well as the user-supplied password.
If the user supplies a bad password too many times, all that the drive does is delete its own internal key, rendering the contents encrypted. Optionally it can also wipe the drive or even destroy it.
Therefore, if it was even possible to copy the image from one Ironkey to another new, not locked drive, it wouldn't work since the internal "random key" would be different.
The drive is also designed to be tamper-resistant making attempts of removing the chip for further analysis on external equipment quite risky.
"take an image of the entire drive"
I'm not certain that will work. IronKey USB drives may not only encrypt their content, they will not allow you to read the secure partition without entering the correct pass code. Add to that some hardware security (can't pry it open without irretrievable damage) and the problem becomes trickier.
There are reports of IronKey hacks. But I'm certain that anyone capable of performing such a feat probably has already contacted the owner.
E-waste is an environmental catastrophe
Yeah. About that:
I have been the recipient of numerous old microwave ovens over the years. The transformers are great for various projects. The magnetrons, however, must be handled with kid gloves. The beryllium oxide insulators (pink ceramic doo-dad sticking out the top) must not be shattered. Inhaling the dust can be hazardous.
So after a while, I take my collection down to a local approved e-waste recycler and enquire as to the possibility of them working my parts through their existing microwave oven recycling stream. "No problem. Just toss them in the pile of old ovens there." I ask how they will be handled (assuming they have someone who removes the hazardous bits). "Nope. We just take the whole tub-skid of ovens down to the metal recycler and they grind them up."
Remind me not to inhale when driving through that part of town.
Don't ever write down your password on a piece of paper
Write it on several pieces and spread them all over the house. Or share them with friends in order to have an off-site backup.