Mark Frauenfelder, co-founder of Boing Boing and former editor of Wired, lost access to $30,000 worth of Bitcoin when he forgot his PIN. His Bitcoin was stored in a Trezor, a small, key-sized device designed to safely store digital currency. After three failed attempts to enter his PIN, Frauenfelder’s Trezor would time-lock for a period of time before he could try again.
Frauenfelder’s quest to recover his Bitcoin took him on a journey involving hypnosis, hacking, and the dark web. A hypnotist failed to recover the lost PIN from his subconscious. He then turned to the Trezor community on Reddit, where he found a post by a teenager who’d hacked a Trezor, and a programmer who’d developed a way to exploit a weakness in the Trezor’s firmware.
Using the information from the Reddit community, Frauenfelder was able to reset his Trezor, enter a new PIN and recover his Bitcoin. This experience highlights the risks and challenges of cryptocurrency security, particularly for individual users who may not have the technical expertise to recover lost access to their digital wallets.
Go to source article: https://www.wired.com/story/i-forgot-my-pin-an-epic-tale-of-losing-dollar30000-in-bitcoin/