Hack this Bitcoin Wallet and its Owner Will Give You USD 250,000

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If you’ve got high-level IT skills and fancy making a cool USD 250 thousand, one company wants to hear from you. All you need to do is break into their crypto wallet – and make away with thousands of dollars’ worth of Bitcoin.

Source: iStock/fatido

But the firm says the task won’t be an easy one, as they believe the wallet to be “unhackable.”

The company in question is startup GK8, run by two former Israeli national cybersecurity experts. The duo established GK8 in 2018, previously worked together in the Office of the Israeli Prime Minister, where were charged with protecting the nation’s strategic assets against cyber-attacks – and say they have applied their skills to creating hack-proof wallets.

The company also has an advisory board that includes cryptography experts such as Zcash founding scientist, Professor Eran Tromer, and the former head of an Israeli intelligence cybersecurity unit.

GK8 says the wallet in question contains some USD 125,000 worth of Bitcoin and will give would-be hackers 24 hours to break into the account from 09:00 a.m. EST on February 3.

There is one caveat, though. The Tel Aviv-based company has stipulated that would-be hackers will need to pre-register in the event.

And if you are successful, you will need to let GK8 know exactly how you broke into the account if you want to collect the lucrative prize.

The move is an unconventional promotion for the company’s cold wallet solution, a so-called “hack-proof digital vault.”

Last year, the startup launched a cold wallet it says it has enabled with “hot” online transfer capacities.

GK8 says its deep cold-wallet infrastructure allows for hot wallet functionalities even without an inbound network connection, thus “eliminating cyber-attack vulnerabilities.”

The Israeli firm completed a seed funding round in September 2019, raising some USD 4 million from investors including Marius Nacht, the co-founder of cybersecurity company Check Point, as well as venture capital and angel investment platform iAngels, blockchain venture capital firm Eden Block, private security and intelligence firm IDEAL-HLS, the government-run Israel Innovation Authority and software developer StratX.

Media outlet Globes reported at the time that the company claimed it was “already securing customers who manage around USD 1 billion for global clients, protected by 5 patents.”