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The quest to liberate $300k of Bitcoin from an old zip file (wired.com)
66 points by mod50ack on Aug 8, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 10 comments



Duplicate:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22774057

The original article has a lot more technical details. Also here's the firsthand account by the author in April:

https://twitter.com/metaweta/status/1246166302688808960


Completely unrelated to this article. But can anyone explain why my WH-1000MX3's (Bluetooth on Android) volume lowers for a few seconds loading this article? Seems to restore to normal volume after the cookie wall disappears.


Fingerprinting scripts often use the Web Audio API (see https://audiofingerprint.openwpm.com/). Sometimes, they use enough of the Web Audio API that the OS thinks they're trying to play audio, and it temporarily reduces the volume of other audio sources, sort of like when it makes your music quieter so you can hear GPS directions more clearly.


Probably because it's trying to play a video ad.


Could it be accessing the microphone which causes a switch to the Bluetooth HSP profile?



> The Guy paid about a quarter of the original price tag.

Cool story but this line doesn't make sense to me? So did he just pay them $25k instead of $100k as agreed. Am i missing or misunderstanding something?


The line read something like 'he thought he'd have to charge 100k' so he made an estimation of the required costs of infrastructure and hours worked I think. He probably communicated the 100k more as a 'I cost this per hour and the machines would likely cost so-and-so would you agree to pay this or can we call it off?'.


Oh okay. That does make sense.

I got the idea that the 100k was a flat fee for decrypting, like 1/3rd of the bitcoin if he could do it. For someone who is about to lose all the moeny that too doesn't sound like a bad deal.


How did the bug originate and what about the timestamp fixed the problem?




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