Police in Australia have successfully cracked the code for a cryptocurrency wallet backup worth 9 million Australian dollars ($5.9 million).
During a recent address, Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner Krissy Barrett highlighted the achievement, praising a data scientist within the agency who has gained a reputation as a “crypto safe cracker.”
While investigating a “well-connected alleged criminal” who amassed cryptocurrency by selling “tech-type products to alleged criminals,” the AFP discovered password-protected notes on his phone. Further investigation revealed an image with a mix of random numbers and words, Barrett noted.
According to Barrett, the numbers were split into six groups with over 50 possible combinations, leading the AFP digital forensics team to suspect it was related to a crypto wallet. The suspect reportedly declined to provide the keys to his wallet, facing a potential 10-year sentence in Australia for this.
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“Our team understood that failing to unlock the crypto wallet could allow the alleged offender to leave prison as a multi-millionaire, benefiting from organized crime,” Barrett remarked. “That was simply not an acceptable outcome.”
Decoding the Wallet
An AFP data scientist noticed that the alleged criminal “sought to create a crypto booby trap in the way the numbers were arranged.” To decipher the 24-word seed phrase, it was essential to remove the first number from each group.
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This was not the first time the AFP’s digital forensics team had recovered cryptocurrency. In another case, the same anonymous data scientist assisted in retrieving over $3 million in digital assets through a different decoding method.
In both instances, the crypto was confiscated by the AFP-led Criminal Assets Confiscation Taskforce. If the court mandates the funds’ seizure, the money will be deposited into a commonwealth account and redistributed by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke to support crime prevention efforts.
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