Crypto recovery firm proposes to hack Ripple’s former CTO’s $244 million Bitcoin hard drive

Cryptocurrency recovery company Unciphered has proposed unlocking an IronKey hard drive belonging to Ripple's former CTO Stefan Thomas, which contains 7,002 BTC (approximately $244 million at the time of publication). The former chief technology officer of Ripple forgot the information to access the drive, which is designed to erase its data after ten incorrect password attempts. Eight attempts have been completed so far, with two remaining chances.

Unciphered stated that its team has developed a method to crack the hardware and access the BTC keys that have been securely stored for years. According to the technology magazine Wired, the company was able to access data on a similar IronKey after "2 million billion attempts," apparently bypassing the drive's ten-attempt limit. (Cointelegraph)