Bitcoin Forum

I was going through some of my old gear at my parent's house and I came across my old PC. The machine is dead but I recovered the hard drive on which I found my old litecoin and Bitcoin wallet files (wallet.dat). I thought I knew the password but it doesn't seem to be working. For anyone with the expertise:

Is there any way to get the addresses from these wallets without the password? Can the passwords be cracked?

At one point I had 100 or more bitcoins and around 30,000 litecoins in those wallets from mining early on and I'm pretty sure they're still in there. With the current prices this is a fortune to me.

Can anyone help? I'm really excited about the prospect of recovering these and I'll split it 50/50 if you can help me.

If there's a better section to post this please let me know.

PM me on skype - tttdawg

I don't have Skype but I'll make a new account just a little later. I'm trying the tools you recommended. If it leads me to unlocking this thing I'll definitely leave you a generous tip.

I'm trying to avoid sending these files out to anyone until I'm sure I can't handle it myself.

With that many.. How is it that you just now remembered this fortune in the closet?
Insane..

If true.. God I hope I get lucky like some people some day..

I'd send you another PM but I don't have their copper membership..

I was told that it got trashed. Mom just passed away, found it in the garage while cleaning up.

Sorry for the loss man.

Thank you. It was a bittersweet moment finding the drive.

In a nutshell, you're going to have a tough time.

If you dont know ANYTHING about the passwords then brute-forcing them could easily take years.  It might not finish during your lifetime.

If you know SOME information about the passwords, you can massively reduce the amount of possibilities that would need to be attempted.  The more info you have the better.  Of course, if you get any of this info wrong, then the correct password might not even be attempted, making the whole thing a massive waste of time.


Funnily enough, I am in a similar situation myself at the moment (though my wallet appears to be broken along with my password not working).  But I'm not so concerned about cracking the password currently because as far as I can tell, my wallet is for empty for whatever stupid reason (there is a seperate thread on this), so it would be a waste of my time.

I honestly think the best thing you can do is really have a good sit down and start typing down in notepad password possibilities.  Are you the type of person to replace e's with 3's?  Are you the type of person that uses the same password over and over, but just changes it slightly?

Try to recreate your surroundings at the time when you would have created the password.  Down to re-arranging the room, perhaps even re-creating the day that you did it (if you do remember anything at all about it).  Memories work in funny ways, and sometimes just re-living an experience of that day can spark the retrieval of a memory of what you did.

I wish you all the luck in the world.

 Hey man you should try this
 Download Pywallet here https://github.com/joric/pywallet  I think its the msi version. search for your wallet.dat with the command. Then run the -dumpwallet command it should dump to a text file. When that happens, you will have the private keys then you can download electrum from electrum.org and input keys to electrum. There should be a tutorial on the electrum website or search google that tell you how. Then you should have your bitcoins, hope this helps if you send me some of the reward i would be greatful, Im only asking for 10 or 15 btc if this works or even for helping you. I really need it for holidays and hope you will.
 My wallet address ill send to you.

Hi Btcspot,
The password will still be required for this to work.  The file is encrypted and nothing is going to be able to extract the private keys without it, because it's gibberish.

Maybe try hypnosis? :)

Seriously..

Yes, pywallet was the first thing I tried.

I'm pretty far down the rabbit hole now with this. I was able to extract the hashes from the bitcoin wallet. There are a handful of passwords I used in that time frame with various minor differences. I'm working on that list now. Looks like the next step is hashcat to try to crack this thing. Very good info deescrid and much appreciated.

I'm on the right path here but way out of my depth. I'll let you guys know how it goes. If you provide advice please leave a BTC address as well so I can show my gratitude. I probably don't have to write this but it's kind of a big deal to me and I don't think I'll get too much sleep until those coins are spendable. Very grateful for any help I can get.

Throw me the hash and I can try cracking it with a rig I have made for password cracking (multiple GPUs, etc)

Haha, I'll look I to this



I appreciate the offer but I'm not sure Id be willing to send off the files or the hashes. What guarantee would I have that someone wouldn't disappear with the cash?

No need to send me the file, the hash would only allow me to crack the password.

Did you use bitcoin2john.py?

For what it's worth I can verify thefragile99's statement that the hash alone should be quite safe - a thief would need both the wallet file and the password/encryption key to be able to unlock it.  If you do go ahead with the suggestion (do your own research first), just make sure that the hash and result are being transmitted securely.

Unless you have some reason to suspect that someone else has a copy of the wallet then there should be minimal risk.

That said - I hope the computer in question is being kept offline!  Looking out for you, you've mentioned a relatively significant amount of numbers in this thread, you will be a target to unscrupulous types.  Please be careful.

Yes, I found a guide that pointed me in that direction thanks to your advice about the hashes. I was under the impression that the hash was private key. I'll need to verify this but I'll Skype you the key. Pardon my paranoia. This is a ton of cash for me to just lose (again).

 

No problem - I completely get it.

I got a decent offer to sell the Bitcoin wallet so I think I'm going to sell it encrypted. Planning to use the funds from the sale to rent some servers to crack the litecoin wallet. This seems like the best option at the moment. I'll be sure to tip you guys out for helping as soon as possible. Thanks!