Australian authorities decrypted a cryptocurrency wallet backup equivalent to 9 million Australian dollars ($5.9 million).
Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Krissy Barrett referred to the achievement as “miraculous work” in a recent speech, acknowledging a data scientist nicknamed “crypto safe cracker” within the agency.
While investigating a so-called “well-connected alleged criminal” who amassed cryptocurrency by selling a “tech-type product to alleged criminals,” the AFP discovered password-protected notes on his phone. Further analysis revealed an image with random numbers and words, according to Barrett.
Barrett indicated that the numbers were organized into six groups with over 50 combinations, leading the AFP’s digital forensics team to conclude it could relate to a crypto wallet. The suspect allegedly refused to provide the keys to his crypto wallet—a violation punishable by 10 years in Australia.
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“We realized that if we couldn’t unlock the crypto wallet, and the alleged offender served time, he would emerge from prison as a multi-millionaire—thanks to organized crime profits,” Barrett stated. “For our members, that outcome was unacceptable.”
How the code was cracked
One data scientist from the AFP noted that the alleged criminal “attempted to create a crypto booby trap in the number formatting.” To decipher the 24-word seed phrase, the first number from each sequence needed to be removed, revealing a wallet with assets valued at $5.9 million.
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The data scientist mentioned that “some sequences appeared incorrect and didn’t seem computer-generated.” He observed that certain strings “looked like a human modified the sequence by appending numbers at the beginning of some strings.”
This was not the AFP’s first successful crypto recovery. In another instance, the same unnamed data scientist assisted in retrieving over $3 million in digital assets through a different decoding method.
In both scenarios, the cryptocurrency was seized by the AFP-led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce. If a court rules for confiscation, the funds will be deposited in a commonwealth account and redistributed by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke to support crime prevention initiatives.
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