According to estimates, there are currently billions of dollars worth of virtual currencies in the market that remain in a state of uncertainty due to incidents such as forgetting passwords and hardware failures. However, with the development of AI technology, these lost digital assets can now be recovered using AI+GPU+algorithm methods.
The increasing popularity of the cryptocurrency market has led to an increase in the diversity and complexity of assets. While this popularity benefits from advanced technology and innovative applications, it also results in a greater number of lost and unrecoverable assets. It is estimated that due to incidents such as forgetting passwords and hardware failures, there are currently billions of dollars worth of virtual currencies in the market that remain in a state of uncertainty.
Research shows that out of the total supply of 21 million bitcoins, approximately 6 million bitcoins are considered lost. Possible reasons for this include forgetting passwords, hardware damage, or the asset owners no longer being alive. Furthermore, 29% of bitcoins have not been moved in the past five years, which may include long-term investors or users engaged in long-term trading. However, a significant number of bitcoins are simply in an unrecoverable state because users have forgotten their passwords or have technical issues preventing access.
For example, in 2013, a British man named James Howells accidentally threw away a hard drive containing 7,500 bitcoins, which are now worth a significant amount in the market. The hard drive is currently buried in a landfill. Former Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas also revealed that he has 7,002 bitcoins stored in the private key of a hardware wallet called IronKey, but he has forgotten the password. He only has two attempts left out of the initial ten, and if he fails, the private key and the 7,002 bitcoins will be permanently lost.
Fortunately, these lost digital assets can now potentially be recovered through the development of artificial intelligence (AI). Cryptocurrency wallet recovery services can assist users in recovering lost bitcoins or ethers from software wallets or hardware wallets, regardless of the amount of their assets.
The first key technology involved is AI training models, particularly those based on OpenAI’s GPT-2 model, such as PASS-GPT. PASS-GPT analyzes a large amount of user behavior data, password patterns, and extensive information to identify possible password structures and commonly used terms. It can predict the passwords that users may have set and generate a series of difficult-to-interpret password combinations using progressive sampling techniques. This is particularly important for brute force attacks, as it efficiently generates password options that are not easily thought of directly, increasing the chances of recovering lost assets. Based on tests, PASS-GPT outperforms other models in password guessing ability by 20% due to its progressive sampling technique.
The next technology is the power of modern GPUs (graphics processing units) and CPUs (central processing units), which provide favorable computational capabilities for the aforementioned AI models. GPUs were initially designed for processing computer graphics and game images and are highly efficient in performing parallel computations. This means that GPUs can handle thousands of computational tasks simultaneously, making them ideal for brute force attacks in password guessing. By combining AI models like PASS-GPT with GPUs, the software and hardware are elevated to their highest levels, creating a more powerful computational system.
Lastly, recovering cryptocurrency wallet passwords requires the ability to prevent side-channel attacks (SCA). Side-channel attacks are a type of security attack that does not directly crack passwords but exploits vulnerabilities by analyzing physical signals (such as power consumption and electromagnetic radiation) generated during cryptographic operations. For example, if an attacker can detect subtle changes in hardware power consumption during specific operations, they may have the opportunity to infer certain parts of the ongoing encryption operations or keys.
To protect cryptocurrencies from this type of attack, many AI algorithm experts are developing and deploying new strategies and techniques, including increasing randomness during the encryption process to make it difficult for attackers to derive meaningful information from physical signals, improving algorithm designs to ensure resistance to side-channel attacks by ensuring that the operation and execution time of the algorithm do not differ based on the secret information being processed (such as passwords or keys), and developing specialized hardware components that consume similar amounts of power during different operations, thereby resisting side-channel attacks.
The security of Bitcoin and virtual currencies is two-sided. While it ensures a certain level of security, it can also inadvertently lead to self-prevention. Fortunately, advancements in AI technology, hardware computational capabilities, and algorithms have created new possibilities and brought more hope to users who have accidentally lost their assets.