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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: mattmill30 on January 29, 2018, 01:50:33 AM



Title: Associating previous transaction IDs with new wallet / signature-based recovery
Post by: mattmill30 on January 29, 2018, 01:50:33 AM
I am new to the world of cryptocurrencies, so appologies if this is a noob question.

I setup the core clients for Bitcoin, Litecoin and zcash, but hadn't recieved any transactions.

Since then I've replaced my computer and don't have access to the wallets anymore, but I've also now been sent transactions to the public keys.

Because I know the public transaction keys, but I don't have the private keys, is it possible to regenerate the private keys?

If it is possible, how would I then add the public and private keys to a new wallet?

Alternatively I can get access to the previous harddrive, but it has been formatted. Is there a signature-based deep scanner available to detect wallet files?

Many thanks


Title: Re: Associating previous transaction IDs with new wallet / signature-based recovery
Post by: bitperson on January 29, 2018, 03:04:00 AM
The whole idea behind public key cryptography is that a private key cannot be derived from its public counterpart. Knowing the transaction IDs doesn’t change that, as TXIDs are intended to be public anyway.

As for salvaging files from a formatted drive, that’s often trivial and there are ‘unformat’ tools available. Things become more complicated if new files have been written to the drive. If there are large amounts of money at stake, consider sending the drive off to a data recovery expert. There’s information available e.g. at https://www.krollontrack.co.uk. Unfortunately I don’t know if there are any specific tools available to find wallet files.


Title: Re: Associating previous transaction IDs with new wallet / signature-based recovery
Post by: ahmad21 on January 29, 2018, 06:44:21 PM
The whole idea behind public key cryptography is that a private key cannot be derived from its public counterpart. Knowing the transaction IDs doesn’t change that, as TXIDs are intended to be public anyway.

As for salvaging files from a formatted drive, that’s often trivial and there are ‘unformat’ tools available. Things become more complicated if new files have been written to the drive. If there are large amounts of money at stake, consider sending the drive off to a data recovery expert. There’s information available e.g. at https://www.krollontrack.co.uk. Unfortunately I don’t know if there are any specific tools available to find wallet files.
Pretty nicely explained there is no such tool until now which can specifically find out the wallet based files. Moreover there is no way until you remember the private key to add the seed into the new wallet. Public key is useless when it comes to accessing your seed. Try these tools for a try on recovering the formatted files
1. https://www.pluralsight.com/blog/tutorials/data-recovery
2. https://turgs.com/data-recovery/windows/
Remember that this tutorial will only work if you haven't re-partitioned the drive if you have deleted the partitions and created new ones in place then there is absolutely no way to get back the files. Moreover the second one might not have a free version.


Title: Re: Associating previous transaction IDs with new wallet / signature-based recovery
Post by: HCP on January 29, 2018, 10:50:08 PM
Alternatively I can get access to the previous harddrive, but it has been formatted. Is there a signature-based deep scanner available to detect wallet files?
You *might* be able to use Pywallet to scan the formatted drive looking for wallets and or keys. It has a --recover mode that scans the drive. Might take a while depending on drive size.

It works with Bitcoin... And I believe you can use the --otherversion parameter to make it look for litecoin... Not sure if it works for zcash ???

Main Pywallet thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=34028.0
Wallet/key recovery guide: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=38004.0

PROTIP: Install Python 2.7... DO NOT use Python 3.x!