Would love to know why after I emailed support about my pending, not sent, withdrawal of .38 BTC, my account on the site suddenly stopped working, and no replies to my emails.

Why the hell is every single gambling site a complete scam?

Aah ok. I was under the impression that there was always a master key, and it was unencrypted until you added a passphrase.

unencrypted wallet.dat just stores private keys (amongst other things).

Encrypted wallet.dat has private keys which are encrypted with a master key (that was not there before it was encrypted), which itself has been encrypted with the derived_key thats made from the password.

Very elegant. You can store the decrypted master key in memory, and while you may be able to extract that, it wont get your the password nor be useful on any other wallet. That makes the nerd in me happy (while the financial advisor inside is still upset

Thanks again, amazing explanation.

Didnt notice your reply before I quoted the one above yours (it was all the answer I needed to see to realize that resistance is futile!)

But after reading it, I now have a technical question.

You said that before the wallet is encrypted, the master key is just a random 32 bit number. After you encrypt it with a password, the password decrypts it, then is wiped.

I'm assuming that it's the same as the unencrypted private key... finding the original unencrypted master key wouldn't do any good, you'd still need to brute force it, correct? Which is no easier than just brute forcing the wallet.

Just curious at this point. What got us into bitcoin originaly (ok, me really) is the cryptography used. It's fascinating to me. You can't copy BTC or fake a transaction (well, easily, 51% and all that) or cheat the system. It's quite beautiful.

Poop. Thanks for the insight. Makes sense they'd do it that way. And I posted this on reddit as well and found out that knowing the decrypted private key wont help either.

Guess I have a lot of work ahead of me. Grr. Thanks for the helpful answers guys. I was really hoping to be able to get the LTC back and not have to do as much manual work.

I'd imagine it would have to be... otherwise you'd need to enter the password to re-lock it.

I got some help on reddit and have been doing some testing and it's not looking good.

But I really want to thank everyone who suggested that I do the things that I already know are options, and those who are insisting that I export those keys RIGHT NOW, as if I havent yet done it.

Let me be clear then: I HAVE ALREADY exported the keys. No kidding. Thats the only backup I have.

I was asking to see if there was an EASIER WAY than manually rebuilding the wallet, AND IN ADDITION, being able to recover the 81 LTC. Not sure why you ask a very specific question, and you get tons of people telling you to do something else.

I know. Export the keys. Save the bitcoin in them. I know that.

My QUESTION was about recovering the passphrase, to both make this easier, and save the LTC.

Right. Understood. But I also very clearly stated in my OP that I'm aware of that, but thats a LOT more work than it would be IF the password were recoverable. In addition, 81 LTC sitting in a locked wallet that uses the same passphrase that I'd prefer not to lose.

I'm fully aware I can export all the info. Exporting it all, doing it by hand, manually reimporting all the addresses is a lot more work than recovering the password if possible. And again, 81 LTC in another wallet.

I understand most lost passwords are a lost cause without months of brute forcing. This is a special case in that I have the unlocked wallet with the password in memory, and I also have a before and after private key to compare.

Thats what I'm tring to see if possible.

I have an odd situation and am looking for some guidance that may save me an absolutely mindblowing amount of work.

I have a bitcoin wallet which has stored a ton of addresses. Many customers and clients pay to their own address, and there is an automated system that wathces those payments and acts on them.

The flash drive that contained the passphrase has been, lets just say it's been irrevocably damaged. (which may or may not have involved our asshole dog). I have it being looked at by a friend who knows about data recovery and electronics, so maybe irrevocable isnt the best term, but, my hopes are not high.

So here's the special circumstance. We lost the passphrase. However, the wallet right now IS OPEN AND UNLOCKED.

Question one: Before we have a power issue or my machine decides to reboot, is it possible to extract the passphrase from memory? It has to be in there somewhere to keep it open. Anyone know how and where to look and with what tool? I used to have a tool back in my video gaming days that would scan the memory of your PC and look for data (42,528gp) and then you change that data (spend some gp) and have it search for the new value. Once it found it, it could edit the data in memory and suddenly you have 999,999gp.

Is anything like that possible with bitcoin?

Second question, not sure if this is harder or easier: We also have a backup of the original wallet BEFORE we added the encryption key. Only a few addresses are in it - so we cant use that (we'd lose over 200 customer private keys). But given we have a wallet with a UNENCRYPTED private key, and the same exact key that IS encrypted, could there be a tool that knowing the before and after, could more easily brute force/figure out the passphrase?

Now before the replies with other alternatives come in, we've already considered them. We cannot just send the balance out to a new address - it's the loss of the current private keys. Issuing each customer a new address and updating all records and the database will be a massive pain in the ass.

Someone else suggested a better option: Export all the private keys, and then re-import them into a new wallet. A better option than above, as we retain all addresses, but it's still a huge amount of work to do by hand (or to hire someone to write the scripts to do it).

That is the option we will go with if we have no other choice. The biggest reason I'm asking here instead of just getting right in on exporting the keys is that we used that passphrase on our LTC wallet also, which is NOT open. The balance in there is not huge - about 81 LTC or so, which is just about 1.2 BTC or so - we could live with losing that, but obviously would rather not, if we could possibly recover the current key.

Is something like this feasiable? Any insight or help would be appreceiated. Thanks in advance.

Anyone know who lost how much on jpcdice last night? Logged in this morning and my investment is up about 22% from when I went to bed! That must have been a massive loss!