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from the Sitting-on-the-beach,-earning-20%? dept.
Following on from an earlier story about the Canadian Crypto exchange whose owner died under suspicious circumstances with the keys to $137m of customers' assets, Business Insider Australia reports that some progress has been made[*] Spoiler alert: the funds are all gone.
The case has sparked numerous theories, including that he faked his own death and ran off with the cash.
However, court-appointed auditor Ernst & Young was able to crack Cotten's laptop. What they found, according to an EY report dated March 1, the accounts had been emptied in April 2018, eight months before his death.[*]
[* Ed.'s Update/Correction -- FP]
[...] A court-appointed auditor, Ernst & Young, has secured Cotten’s laptop, home computer, USB keys and home computer. Using public blockchain records, it determined the digital wallets thought to contain millions were emptied in April, eight months before his death [...]
I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SomeGuy on Thursday March 07 2019, @02:53AM (15 children)
So how exactly did they "crack" it. If they guessed the password was 12345 because it was the same as on his luggage, that is not exactly cracking.
If they cracked the encryption, then either the encryption was crap, or we live in a TV show were some punk tech can crack or hack the most secure systems in a mater of minutes.
[Presses player Eject button]
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Thursday March 07 2019, @03:08AM (2 children)
Yes -- some details on how the laptop was encrypted and how they cracked it would be useful info.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @03:12AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:09PM
NTLM? Do you even know what that means?
I'm pretty sure it's not relevant and turned off by default these days.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday March 07 2019, @03:11AM (4 children)
Sometimes, cracking is not all it is cracked up to be, as in even the smartest people can have the most stupid passwords. Take, for instance, the President of Druidia! ("I told you never to call me on this wall phone!")
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:46AM (3 children)
t. ironic geek
Druidia is a monarchy; Skroob was president of Planet Spaceball.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday March 07 2019, @06:02AM (2 children)
Oh, Shit! Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Or, in non-latin, "My bad".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @06:50AM (1 child)
Actually it’s mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa, said while striking your breast three times.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday March 07 2019, @07:12AM
What did I say? Are you a schizomist! Apostate? Magna Cum Laude .44! And Labia Moron, for Tejas!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by julian on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:06AM (4 children)
Yes, I want to know how his laptop was encrypted. My current system is to use LUKS for whole disk encryption. I use a long key that's memorable but unguessable and not possible to be contained in any dictionary file or permutation generator that doesn't regress to being a brute force attack. Then my passwords are stored in an encrypted Keepass database with a different key.
I am as confident as possible that I could lose this laptop anywhere in the world and (as long as it was powered off) the data would never be recovered. A motivated nation-state might be able to find some flaw in both of those crypto systems, but I find that unlikely. It's trivial to calculate [grc.com] that my keys cannot be brute forced with any classical computer that could reasonably be expected to ever be built on Earth. No living person is immune to rubber hose cryptanalysis.
Assuming they didn't just find the key written down somewhere, it was probably Windows 10 with Bitlocker, which in many cases transmits your "backup" key to Microsoft's servers. [thewindowsclub.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07 2019, @04:34AM
Unguessable, huh? Not in any book or file, huh? Here, hold my beer.
(Score: 2) by hoeferbe on Thursday March 07 2019, @12:45PM (2 children)
The did not crack the laptop. Please see my previous comment [soylentnews.org] about it.
(Score: 2) by julian on Friday March 08 2019, @01:24AM (1 child)
Why are you formatting your posts this way?
(Score: 1) by hoeferbe on Friday March 08 2019, @01:03PM
I got in the habit of linking to the profile of the person to whom I am responding and linking to the parent post to which I am responding, back when there was no "Parent" button. Before then, a reader could not easily see the parent post if it was below their threshold. I wanted to provide a way in which they could.
I guess since there is a Parent button, now, I can stop. I just didn't consider it. 😊
(Score: 5, Informative) by hoeferbe on Thursday March 07 2019, @12:39PM
From the bottom of TFA [businessinsider.com.au]:
SoylentNews Editors, please adjust this article's headline & description!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday March 07 2019, @07:26PM
> we live in a TV show were some punk tech can crack or hack the most secure systems in a mater of minutes.
You see, all it takes is the right background music, montage of windows opening and closing, and two people using the same keyboard without talking to each other.
No secret can resist that.