Hacking A Crypto Wallet Is Possible (But Not Easy)

✍️ 16 August, 2022 - 16:23 👤 Editor: Jakub Motyka

• A computer security team has managed to hack a crypto wallet from the manufacturer Trezor.
• They have managed to decipher the 25th security word that allows access to the true cryptocurrency wallet that is hidden in the device.
• They have achieved it in less than 24 hours.

A crypto wallet is by far the most secure device to store cryptocurrencies. But that does not mean that it is infallible: in certain situations, it is possible to hack a physical cryptocurrency wallet. The point is that there must be very specific circumstances that, in general, will not be the ones that a user who decides to choosing a cryptocurrency wallet for the first time. That has been the case of the hacking of the Trezor crypto wallet.

The company KeychainX received a request from a client of a Trezor crypto wallet that consisted of recovering access to the passphrase, which did not it is nothing other than the 25th security word that allows you to unlock full access to the cryptocurrency wallet. Because even having the list of 24 security words, there is one last extra word that, if not known, prevents access to Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) or whatever cryptocurrency is stored in the wallet.

Recovering The Trezor Passphrase Or Password In Less Than 24 Hours

Through a brute force method, the KeychainX team managed to recover the password of the Trezor cryptocurrency wallet in less than 24 hours. They achieved this by using a proprietary tool running on a GPU, which allows them to test up to 240,000 passwords per second, which combined with some customer guidance regarding possible passwords they might have used on their crypto wallet allowed to reach the correct solution.

This does not mean that a crypto wallet is hackable by system. In this case, it was necessary to have access to the 24 secret words for recovering the wallet, something that in principle no person should share when they have a cryptocurrency wallet.

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• What Is Slippage Tolerance: Meaning, Which One Should You Use, And More