You might have heard the name, John Cantrell. He made it to the crypto headlines recently when he successfully brute-forced the remaining four words out of a 12-word mnemonic after the BTC wallet owner publicly showed the first eight words. Yes, John Cantrell is that same guy who’s also the Bitcoin and Lightning Network project developer.
After the headlines stated that John Cantrell successfully got into someone else’s Bitcoin wallet, some people started to become paranoid about the safety of the Bitcoin blockchain and the 12-word backup phrase, which is very common with non-custodial cryptocurrency wallets.
However, John himself claimed that the only way he could hack that Bitcoin wallet earlier was because the wallet owner publicly announced the other eight words from the 12-word backup phrase.
John believed it would be impossible to hack into a Bitcoin wallet if the owner never revealed the first eight words of that backup phrase in the first place. He claimed that it took him huge resources of computing power and time just to get into the last four words of the wallet’s 12-word mnemonic.
In a situation where the owner never revealed anything to him, he claims one would need a $100 billion investment and still take 422 trillion years to hack a bitcoin wallet - which means it’s impossible to brute force into someone’s BTC wallet address without any prior exposure.
Source: CoinTelegraph
