In under 30 minutes, a systems architect successfully cracked a 12-word seed phrase and won a bounty of 100,000 Satoshi, equivalent to 0.001 Bitcoin or $29. The seed phrase, generated when a wallet is created, acts as a master key to access the wallet.
The challenge was initiated by Bitcoin educator “Wicked Bitcoin” who shared the 12-word seed phrase on Twitter, but with the words scrambled and not in the correct order. The task was to brute force the correct order of the words.
The winner Andrew Fraser, used BTCrecover, a software tool available on GitHub, to crack the code. He claimed that anyone with basic knowledge of running Python scripts, using the Windows command shell, and understanding the Bitcoin protocol could replicate his success.
Fraser also emphasized the importance of taking crypto security seriously. Although the seed phrases are secure when the words are unknown to an attacker, adding a passphrase can provide extra protection. Additionally, a 24-word seed key is even more secure than a 12-word seed key, as it has 256 bits of entropy compared to 128 bits.
Despite the superiority of a 24-word seed key, the probability of an attacker cracking a 12-word seed phrase is relatively low, especially if a passphrase is added. However, it’s always better to err on the side of caution when it comes to cryptocurrency security.
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