Algorithm for guessing Bitcoin wallet password

[Andrey123]

Hi all!

I found my old flash drive and it turns out I have a couple of coins!
But I don’t remember the password at all, and I can’t install Bitcoin Core with all transactions, since it weighs a lot

What can you use to start password recovery?
Is the Electrum wallet suitable?
Do you need a video card or just a regular laptop will do?

I can't find information on this issue((
Or some paid programs come out and maybe they contain viruses, or just articles on how to protect yourself from the theft of coins.

[Charles-Tim]

Use https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover for the password recovery.

Readthedocs: https://btcrecover.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.


Or use https://github.com/Coding-Enthusiast/FinderOuter

[Andrey123]

Thank you.
That is, do I understand correctly, the more powerful the device on which I run the program, the faster the selection speed will be?

Maybe there is some kind of performance table?
There are a lot of video cards now.

[Charles-Tim]

That is, do I understand correctly, the more powerful the device on which I run the program, the faster the selection speed will be?

The more powerful the device processor, the faster it will be.

Maybe there is some kind of performance table?

If it is just 3 characters that are missing, it will take just few minutes to get the missing words. If it is becoming longer, it will becoming more difficult to brute force.

I do not know of any table about this. Also that devices have different processors.

[ABCbits]

I found my old flash drive and it turns out I have a couple of coins!
But I don’t remember the password at all, and I can’t install Bitcoin Core with all transactions, since it weighs a lot

FYI, you can install Bitcoin Core without downloading blockchain by clicking network icon on bottom right of the GUI application. That way, you can find out list of address and list of transaction (which may be not up to date).

Do you need a video card or just a regular laptop will do?

You can use regular laptop. But video card or GPU let you brute force much faster[1].

[1] https://btcrecover.readthedocs.io/en/latest/GPU_Acceleration

[Andrey123]

I can't run btcrecover, the instructions indicate an old version of Python.

I installed the latest one and the commands don't work.
Then version 2.7.1 and nothing works either.

[SilverCryptoBullet]

Or use https://github.com/Coding-Enthusiast/FinderOuter

It is to find missing words in wallet seed, not to brute force wallet password if I understand the guide of FinderOuter software correctly.
Video on bruteforce passwords. The more characters in the password you remember, higher chance to bruteforce it successfully.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMtW8vIHHek

[BitMaxz]

I can't run btcrecover, the instructions indicate an old version of Python.

I installed the latest one and the commands don't work.
Then version 2.7.1 and nothing works either.

BTCrecovery tool does not work on the latest version of Python you need to downgrade its version to the recommended version which is 2.7.

Make sure to follow the instructions provided from this link below for Windows users if the 2.7 does not work try the other version mentioned in the guide below.

- https://btcrecover.readthedocs.io/en/latest/INSTALL/

[nc50lc]

But I don’t remember the password at all, -snip-

Even the latest GPU and CPU wont help in that case.
BTCRecover or other wallet password bruteforce tool will only work if the search-space is relatively low.
In other words, you need to provide a good portion of your correct password and BTCRecover will bruteforce the rest.

If it has to bruteforce an 8-character password or missing 8 characters numeral-by-numeral (letters - both case, numbers & common symbols),
that would be 68^8 which is extremely high, even for a multi-GPU rig; there's even more if you count all ASCII printable characters.
And that's only for 8characters, if you do not know how long your password is, the tool will have to search from lower to higher number of possible permutations.

I can't run btcrecover, the instructions indicate an old version of Python.

I'm using 3rdIteration's BTCRecover on Python 3.10.

[ABCbits]

I can't run btcrecover, the instructions indicate an old version of Python.

I installed the latest one and the commands don't work.
Then version 2.7.1 and nothing works either.

You tried the old btcrecover by gurnec, https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover. But these days we refer to btcrecover by 3rdIteration which use Python 3, https://github.com/3rdIteration/btcrecover. This btcrecover have more feature and better documentation, so usually there's no good reason to use the older one.

Or use https://github.com/Coding-Enthusiast/FinderOuter

It is to find missing words in wallet seed, not to brute force wallet password if I understand the guide of FinderOuter software correctly.

You're right, assuming OP talk about brute-forcing wallet.dat which generated by Bitcoin Core.

[Andrey123]

I can't figure out the instructions on what and how to run(

I seem to remember some of the symbols, I’m looking for a device to install Ubuntu and run it there.

[nc50lc]

I can't figure out the instructions on what and how to run

There are already well-detailed youtube videos of installation for each Operating Systems in their documentary page.
If you come across an error, you can always ask here for a possible fix or workaround but you must indicate the specs and OS of the machine you're working on.

I seem to remember some of the symbols,

"Seem" doesn't look promising since it has to be as accurate as possible.
You must also know the number of characters, how many are missing and uncertain.
This is so you can get a heads-up if it's possible or not before committing to purchase GPU/PC and set everything up.

About the actual bruteforce, your token file must be created specifically for your case.
The positions of the known characters and possible characters must be indicated accurately and in a way that it'll create as little search space as possible.
Refer to this doc: btcrecover.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tokenlist_file/

If you can't create a token file yourself, you must provide an example of the situation in full-detail so we can make it for you (change the characters in the example)
But it must be as accurate as possible or the token file will be just a waste of time and resources.

BTW, BTCRecover's GPU support is still experimental so you might not get the performance boost that you're expecting with a GPU.

--enable-gpu          enable experimental OpenCL-based GPU acceleration (only supports Bitcoin Core wallets and extracts)