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Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: efreeet on September 04, 2018, 04:15:59 PM



Title: LedgerWallet - 24 Seed Phrases and one Word is missing/lost
Post by: efreeet on September 04, 2018, 04:15:59 PM
I've done something stupid. Never tried my mnemonic seed from ledger device. The device itself got wiped and needed to restore it. Everything would be fine, but it looks my words are wrong (must have done some kind of error while writing it down).

Now words 9 and 12 is exactly the same. Could 2 words be same on 1 mnemonic seed?

Assuming 2 words can't be same o my guess is i've written down a wrong one, on one of those position. Question is, can I retrieve access to that wallet?

I will pay if anyone would get it done.

I've already made some research it looks there are 2048 possible words, so it is just 2 x 2048 possible combinations, thats isn't that bad, problem is using leadger nano s it takes at least 10 minutes to try out just 1 seed. Would there be any other way? For instance can electrum be used? I found out that phrases could be copy pasted there. Still no idea if that should work or not, espiecially that need to check BIP39 seed option there in order for wallet to go farther and generate public addresses.

I can possible get public addresses to that wallet if necessary.  


Title: Re: LedgerWallet - 24 Seed Phrases and one Word is missing/lost
Post by: LoyceV on September 04, 2018, 04:22:59 PM
Could 2 words be same on 1 mnemonic seed?
Yes, that's possible.

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Assuming 2 words can't be same o my guess is i've written down a wrong one, on one of those position. Question is, can I retrieve access to that wallet?
If you haven't tried the seed yet, I suggest to give it a try first.
Brute-forcing just one word should be possible, but it might not even be needed in this case.

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Again I would love to pay for help here. Please help, my email address: twofreckles@gmail.com (just in case someone have a solution ready).
Be careful who to trust, don't send anybody your seed words. Scammers will probably contact you in private.


Title: Re: LedgerWallet - 24 Seed Phrases and one Word is missing/lost
Post by: LoyceV on September 04, 2018, 06:47:50 PM
That means you'll have to brute-force it. I haven't tried this myself, but I assume there's software out there to do this.
Make sure you run this on an off-line computer, and just to be sure it shouldn't go online ever again before formatting it.


Title: Re: LedgerWallet - 24 Seed Phrases and one Word is missing/lost
Post by: o_e_l_e_o on September 04, 2018, 08:00:59 PM
First thing to do is to check all the words are in the BIP39 word list here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039/english.txt)

If they are not, then one is misspelled. Easy. If they are all in the list, then you need to brute force it.

That means you'll have to brute-force it. I haven't tried this myself, but I assume there's software out there to do this.

There is indeed. Take a look at: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md (https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md)



Title: Re: LedgerWallet - 24 Seed Phrases and one Word is missing/lost
Post by: Thirdspace on September 04, 2018, 10:30:24 PM
I've already made some research it looks there are 2048 possible words, so it is just 2 x 2048 possible combinations, thats isn't that bad, problem is using leadger nano s it takes at least 10 minutes to try out just 1 seed. Would there be any other way?
you can do it manually using iancoleman BIP 39 Mnemonic Code Converter, download & run it offline
but you have to remember the first address (or any address) you've used in your Ledger
each try would only take a few seconds ;)
if you know scripting, you can even modify it a bit and have your own brute force script 8)


Title: Re: LedgerWallet - 24 Seed Phrases and one Word is missing/lost
Post by: bob123 on September 05, 2018, 07:37:35 AM
It is definitely possible that 2 words out of your 24 word seed are identical.
The probability of that happening is way higher than one would assume.

Regarding your 'problem', if your seed doesn't work (either generates an empty wallet which is rather unprobable or doesn't work at all),
bruteforcing 1 word is definitely doable within a few seconds using a small script. Even 2 words shouldn't be a problem.

The checksum is helping a lot in terms of optimization since you won't have to derive private keys / addresses from each seed (the majority of seeds will be invalid).

 


Title: Re: LedgerWallet - 24 Seed Phrases and one Word is missing/lost
Post by: HCP on September 06, 2018, 04:30:42 AM
If you know at least one address from your wallet (like you have a record of one receive address generated by your ledger)... you can probably simply use the seedrecover portion of btcrecover (https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md) to figure out which word is incorrect.

It will easily find one mistake (measured in seconds/minutes)... and is pretty simple to run.