Even if he did, that doesn't mean his seed is definitely unrecoverable as you imply.

Electrum, until recently, truncated the wallet file before writing to it for each wallet save. This could leave the (possibly encrypted) seed in multiple blocks on the drive, depending on how often Electrum saved the wallet file, even if he shredded it. (Newer versions of Electrum create a new wallet file, and then unlink the old one, again leaving the seed in potentially multiple blocks).

MZ's questions are good ones.

democrite,

There are two good suggestions by shorena and jim618 which you seem to be ignoring.

Meanwhile, you've responded to a possibly dangerous suggestion by Rude Boy. Exporting/importing private keys isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it's possibly dangerous if you don't know how to securely handle sensitive data, or if you don't know what Rude Boy means by "shred" (which has a very specific meaning—it doesn't mean delete). IOW, if you're not an IT person, I probably wouldn't follow Rude Boy's advice.

Please be careful....

A short FYI— as of Python 2.7.9, setup tools/pip are (finally!) bundled w/Python (see PEP 477).

Right, it doesn't increase the entropy, it's there to make it possible to detect if a seed is valid or not. If you mistype a word during a restore, it can (with a 99.6% probability) detect that your seed is invalid and warn you.


Because I'm old and forgetful?

Seriously though, I only meant that I think it's foolish to depend only on your memory to protect your bitcoin funds. I see no problem if you also have it stored (in hard copy) safely.

It is referring to that, but the format that MultiBit HD expects isn't at all obvious.


Here's a short Python one line script which creates such a timestamp, but be sure to estimate your wallet creation date on the older side when asked for it.


If you don't already have Python installed, just visit here and press the run button: http://repl.it/mHe

Quoting from that very same post (which had already been linked by grue above, BTW):


Also, for Bromium Labs:

Sounds to me like that might be a bug....

Just a suggestion: if you're only using different accounts for keeping funds separate, it might make more sense to use the built-in multiple accounts feature (near the bottom of the settings page).

pedrog,

Your post is irrelevant because OP was never infected by CoinVault, but rather by TeslaCrypt which is completely unrelated.

Had you read either the very first post or the very last one (above), you would have seen this, but you did not.

Do you not have a "Show other logins" option just below the PIN field?

That's not good. Do these return anything? (don't post anything sensitive / anything that might be a key!)


Also, you didn't answer if you have your seed written down, do you?

That's cause I messed it up (and didn't even bother testing it)

Can you give this a try?

This should give a more specific error message:


(FYI I'm assuming 1.9.x based on OP's initial traceback.)

Also, do you have your seed?

When an update occurs, the result is a hash of the entire tx history.

To determine what changed, you need to do a get_history.

The idea is that wallet software can cache the result from watch_address, and only issue a get_history when the hash changes.

Did you do a permanent delete? If not, it might be in your Windows "Recycle Bin".

Even if it's not, for 0.2 btc, I'd try a freebie undelete utility like Recuva. May as well, it's easy to try, and it can't hurt....


FYI restore points in Windows don't typically cover the %appdata% directory.


Not very convenient with Bitcoin Core, considering you'd need to update all of those backups for every 100 new addresses or outbound transactions you make....

If you click on the "?" next to the Amount field, it will tell you that you can type a "!" for the amount, and Electrum will fill in the correct Amount and Fee for you.

Although you could export your private keys from Bitcoin Core and then import them into a new Electrum wallet, you'd be missing out on a number of important features.

A likely better option is to create a new Electrum wallet, write down the seed (very important! it is your backup), and then send your bitcoins from Bitcoin Core to an address in your new Electrum wallet.

For example, one benefit of doing it this way is your seed backup: it is all you'll ever need to restore a corrupted/lost wallet. If you export/import your private keys, you can't use a single seed to backup/restore your wallet.

Also, just FYI, Bitcoin Core version 0.11 will (sometime around July?) probably include pruning support. When enabled, it'll reduce the storage requirements by a factor of about 30x.

If you want to remain a bit more standards-compliant, it sounds to me that what you'd want is wallet software which:

  1. Creates multiple BIP-44 accounts from a single seed, and allows you to export the account extended private keys.
  2. Allows the import of an individual account extended private key.

In practice, this doesn't get you very far today. The only wallet software I'm aware of which can easily do (1) is Mycelium for Android, and the only wallet software which can easily do (2) is Mycelium for Android and Electrum (on the plus side, the two are compatible—you can export an xprv from Mycelium into Electrum and result in the same keys/addresses).

If you'd like to stick with the Bitcoin Wallet for Android, I think what you're doing is about as good as you can get.


I'd be a bit worried too.

How does it respond to a protobuf with no deterministic seed at all (it's an optional protobuf record, after all)? That should be a bit safer if it works, yes?

Also, I wonder if you could "trick" Bitcoin Wallet into accepting a BIP-44 account? In other words, generate a BIP-44 account at m/44'/0'/#', and then create a protobuf with m/0' equal to the generated xprv, and also include m/0'/0 and m/0'/1'. Do not include either the deterministic seed nor the key at path m (just to make sure Bitcoinj doesn't overwrite m/0' with the wrong xprv).

toddball,

It's great to hear you managed to recover most of your files w/o even having to pay a ransom!

Although you may not need it now, did you see grue's post?


It links to a decryption utility for TeslaCrypt posted just yesterday by researchers over at Cisco, which may or may not work depending on which version of TeslaCrypt you have. It might be worth a try to recover your remaining files.

Even if it doesn't work, they're trying to improve it to work on newer versions of TeslaCrypt as well, so you may want to keep an eye on their blog for future updates.

Translation contributions are handled via Transifex: https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/bitcoin-wallet/

As improvements are made in Transifex, they are eventually copied down to a new version of the app (but it takes some time).

I checked the translations you mentioned above, and they are all either (1) already translated in Transifex and waiting to be copied down to the app, or (2) untranslatable due to current software limitations. IOW, you can sign up for Transifex if you like and make a request to become a translator for Bitcoin Wallet, however there's not currently any untranslated French text.

If you're interested, here are the two translations that are pending (I've no idea if they're correct, and don't have access to change them even if I knew better):
again = de nouveau
To protect your privacy, your address will change once it receives a payment. = Par souci de confidentialité, votre adresse changera après avoir reçu un paiement.

The other three are the untranslatable ones (due to current software limitations).

I don't mean to be discouraging.... I'm sure there are other projects that would be delighted to have some help with translation. For example, Lighthouse doesn't have any French translation yet: https://www.transifex.com/projects/p/lighthouse-app/

Your degree clearly wasn't in reading comprehension. OP stated the exact virus name in the first post