Old MultiBit Wallet assistance - Classic (I think)

[scaleybad]

Hi all,

I have been trying to get into an old .wallet file that old me kindly saved on dropbox for future me.
I am pretty sure it's classic as it doesn't have the aes extension on the end.

I have version 0.5.19 of multibit classic installed but when I try to import the wallet I get the error:

Unable to load wallet "C:\Users\xxx\Desktop\xxx\xxx.wallet" or backups. See help on "Wallet Backups" for more details.
The error was "com.google.bitcoin.store.UnreadableWalletException Could not parse input stream to protobuf".
Could not load the wallet file "C:\Users\xxx\Desktop\xxx\xxx.wallet".
The error message was "null"

I have tried some of the python recovery tools but I can not for the life of me get them working.

Any assistance greatly appreciated and a reward if there is anything in there also available (possibly not but we live in hope).

I am 90% sure it's a BTC wallet though it could be dare I say it doge...as I did have a period of mining that back in the day, are there any other possibilities for example LTC? as I also mined that a fair bit too.

Thanks

[scaleybad]

Just downloading 0.5.18 to see if that helps probably have to run it in a VM with windows 7 installed to save pissing around with java.

[LoyceV]

I've collected everything I've found about recovering Multibit wallets here. Just use CTRL-F and see if it helps.

[scaleybad]

I've collected everything I've found about recovering Multibit wallets here. Just use CTRL-F and see if it helps.

Great resource!

Thanks buddy will take a look through.

[scaleybad]

so tried with 0.5.18 on a windows 7 vm same error message, looking through the resources on the thread provided by LoyceV but no joy so far.

[Lucius]

I remember a lot of people having had similar problems in the past, but luckily @HCP did something that could solve your problem. He created a script that extracts private keys from the Multibit Classic or HD version in a very simple way. For more information read the following thread, especially the last post.

MultiBit Classic fails to open wallet file

[NeuroticFish]

There has been a MultiDoge too back then. I don't know how difficult would be to find it and also try to load up the wallet, still, it could be another direction...

[scaleybad]

There has been a MultiDoge too back then. I don't know how difficult would be to find it and also try to load up the wallet, still, it could be another direction...

I remember a lot of people having had similar problems in the past, but luckily @HCP did something that could solve your problem. He created a script that extracts private keys from the Multibit Classic or HD version in a very simple way. For more information read the following thread, especially the last post.

MultiBit Classic fails to open wallet file

Thanks guys will take a look, pretty sure I have looked at and tried the script but worth another punt

[scaleybad]

so interestingly I got a better exception error in the doge multibit wallet.

UnreadableWalletException ... so it is encrypted I believe, so the next step is figuring out the decryption (presuming I can remember the password)

I don't think it is a doge wallet but at least I get more of an idea of what's going on from that error.


Had a try again with the tools provided by HCP but got the following error:

ValueError: not a wallet file: Field number 0 is illegal.
Also further up in the stack was something that said the wallet was not encrypted.

wonder what my next steps should be?

Code:

C:\Users\xxxx\Desktop\multibit_recovery-master>python decrypt_multibit_classic_walletkeys.py xxxx.wallet
File NOT Encrypted
not a wallet file: Field number 0 is illegal.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\xxxx\Desktop\multibit_recovery-master\decrypt_multibit_classic_walletkeys.py", line 163, in load_wallet
    pb_wallet.ParseFromString(plaintext)
  File "C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\Packages\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.9_qbz5n2kfra8p0\LocalCache\local-packages\Python39\site-packages\google\protobuf\message.py", line 199, in ParseFromString
    return self.MergeFromString(serialized)
  File "C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\Packages\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.9_qbz5n2kfra8p0\LocalCache\local-packages\Python39\site-packages\google\protobuf\internal\python_message.py", line 1139, in MergeFromString
    if self._InternalParse(serialized, 0, length) != length:
  File "C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\Packages\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.9_qbz5n2kfra8p0\LocalCache\local-packages\Python39\site-packages\google\protobuf\internal\python_message.py", line 1189, in InternalParse
    raise message_mod.DecodeError('Field number 0 is illegal.')
google.protobuf.message.DecodeError: Field number 0 is illegal.

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\xxxx\Desktop\multibit_recovery-master\decrypt_multibit_classic_walletkeys.py", line 240, in <module>
    wallet = load_wallet(wallet_file, get_password)
  File "C:\Users\xxxx\Desktop\multibit_recovery-master\decrypt_multibit_classic_walletkeys.py", line 168, in load_wallet

Interestingly it looks like its using the python 3.9 binary which I thought I had removed not sure if that would impact it all

Going to do a fresh windows install later and see how it goes.

[HCP]

Interestingly it looks like its using the python 3.9 binary which I thought I had removed not sure if that would impact it all

Just FYI, I am fairly sure that my scripts are only compatible with Python 2... they certainly haven't been tested with Python 3 and likely to break horribly when running Python 3.

That might be causing issues... but it is also likely that the .wallet file has been corrupted or is not a multibit wallet format. It's also possible that the .wallet file is so old that it is not using the protobuf format that the script is expecting.

If you open (a copy of) your .wallet file in a text editor... do you see something like this:



Specifically, the "org.bitcoin.production" at the beginning... and the "org.multbit.walletProtect.2" at the end?


NOTE: DO NOT screenshot or copy/paste the contents of your .wallet file here! I just want to know if it looks something like this...

[scaleybad]

Thanks for reaching out HCP.

I was actually using python 2 initially but was doing a bit of dev work and had ended up with 3 on there too but I have tried with 2 but still no joy.
The file is almost certainly encrypted I think.

I searched the text and found 2 references to "org" one near the top of the file and one near the bottom but the text appears to be encrypted so cant make out the full text.

I honestly cant remember if I had a btc wallet at that specific time or if it could be related to another coin, I have almost convinced myself I had an LTC wallet back then, do you know if there were any forks of multibit specifically for LTC or any other coins?

Any ideas if there is a means of gaining access if it was pre protobuf? This is also a possibility as I was in early with BTC.

Thanks really appreciate any help.



Edit: just found that the file was last saved in 2018 so not so old.

[HCP]

I searched the text and found 2 references to "org" one near the top of the file and one near the bottom but the text appears to be encrypted so cant make out the full text.

If you don't see the full "org.bitcoin.production" and/or "org.multibit.walletProtect.2" text... then it's possible the file is actually corrupt.

The screenshot example I posted above is from a "password protected" (ie. encrypted) Multibit Classic wallet file. The reason it has all the weird characters is that it is stored in a "protobuf" format which is a binary type file, rather than being ASCII text based.


This screen shot is from a multbit classic wallet that has no password set:


You can see it still has "org.bitcoin.production" at the start, but there is no "org.multibit.walletProtect.2" text at the end.


So, if you don't at least see the FULL "org.bitcoin.production" text right at the start, then my guess is that either your .wallet file is from a different wallet application or it's corrupted.

[NeuroticFish]

Edit: just found that the file was last saved in 2018 so not so old.

And since the summer of 2018 Multibit is no longer having support, it's even more important to check what HCP said in order to see what type of data is in that file, i.e it's a Multibit wallet or not.

[scaleybad]

Thanks guys,

So it doesn't have the full .org on either of them so it is possibly corrupt but there is definitely a chance its from a different wallet application if not multibit.
As far as I can remember I have only mined, BTC, LTC and Eth but there could be the odd wallet that I had setup to trade with though I didn't really do a ton of alt trading back then.

Would be useful to see if anyone is aware of other wallets either BTC or otherwise that used the .wallet extension?

Thanks again