Help Recovering Electrum Password?

[jeffthebaker]

Hello Bitcointalk, I recently set my friend up with a Bitcoin wallet after he explained that he wanted to purchase something, and the sellers only accepted Bitcoin. He installed an Electrum wallet and I left the room for a bit while he set it up. I loaned him some Bitcoins, but when he went to send the coins, a problem arose. You see, my friend is dyslexic, and it turns out he typed his password incorrectly... twice. He doesn't know what his password is, and he needs it to send coins. No problem I thought, just use your wallet generation seed to get access to your private key.... he didn't save the words, and needs to enter his password to view them. He also didn't set up 2FA.

To summarize, he doesn't know his password, and did not take any necessary backup measures. Is there any way he can get access to his coins back?

[notlist3d]

Hello Bitcointalk, I recently set my friend up with a Bitcoin wallet after he explained that he wanted to purchase something, and the sellers only accepted Bitcoin. He installed an Electrum wallet and I left the room for a bit while he set it up. I loaned him some Bitcoins, but when he went to send the coins, a problem arose. You see, my friend is dyslexic, and it turns out he typed his password incorrectly... twice. He doesn't know what his password is, and he needs it to send coins. No problem I thought, just use your wallet generation seed to get access to your private key.... he didn't save the words, and needs to enter his password to view them. He also didn't set up 2FA.

To summarize, he doesn't know his password, and did not take any necessary backup measures. Is there any way he can get access to his coins back?

Sadly it is likely it is gone forever.   He not saving seed is a huge mistake it warns on it I believe to save it safely.   And to forget password it is hard to explain how hard it is to brute force a single wallet.

Does he know generally what he typed as password?  If he does you might be able to find someone to try to get in it.  But you will need to have a good general idea of what password was or it will never happen.

So depends on how much he remembers of password.   But most likely gone forever.  Out of curiosity how much was lost?

[jeffthebaker]

Hello Bitcointalk, I recently set my friend up with a Bitcoin wallet after he explained that he wanted to purchase something, and the sellers only accepted Bitcoin. He installed an Electrum wallet and I left the room for a bit while he set it up. I loaned him some Bitcoins, but when he went to send the coins, a problem arose. You see, my friend is dyslexic, and it turns out he typed his password incorrectly... twice. He doesn't know what his password is, and he needs it to send coins. No problem I thought, just use your wallet generation seed to get access to your private key.... he didn't save the words, and needs to enter his password to view them. He also didn't set up 2FA.

To summarize, he doesn't know his password, and did not take any necessary backup measures. Is there any way he can get access to his coins back?

Sadly it is likely it is gone forever.   He not saving seed is a huge mistake it warns on it I believe to save it safely.   And to forget password it is hard to explain how hard it is to brute force a single wallet.

Does he know generally what he typed as password?  If he does you might be able to find someone to try to get in it.  But you will need to have a good general idea of what password was or it will never happen.

So depends on how much he remembers of password.   But most likely gone forever.  Out of curiosity how much was lost?

Not a huge loss, only $15 or so worth of BTC. Luckily, he somewhat knows what the password is - he was trying to type out a password he has used before but supposedly butchered the spelling when inputting the pass. Hopefully he will be able to get by brute force the wallet with minor mispellings of the original password. From the research I have done, it appears that cracking the password is the only way.

[notlist3d]

Hello Bitcointalk, I recently set my friend up with a Bitcoin wallet after he explained that he wanted to purchase something, and the sellers only accepted Bitcoin. He installed an Electrum wallet and I left the room for a bit while he set it up. I loaned him some Bitcoins, but when he went to send the coins, a problem arose. You see, my friend is dyslexic, and it turns out he typed his password incorrectly... twice. He doesn't know what his password is, and he needs it to send coins. No problem I thought, just use your wallet generation seed to get access to your private key.... he didn't save the words, and needs to enter his password to view them. He also didn't set up 2FA.

To summarize, he doesn't know his password, and did not take any necessary backup measures. Is there any way he can get access to his coins back?

Sadly it is likely it is gone forever.   He not saving seed is a huge mistake it warns on it I believe to save it safely.   And to forget password it is hard to explain how hard it is to brute force a single wallet.

Does he know generally what he typed as password?  If he does you might be able to find someone to try to get in it.  But you will need to have a good general idea of what password was or it will never happen.

So depends on how much he remembers of password.   But most likely gone forever.  Out of curiosity how much was lost?

Not a huge loss, only $15 or so worth of BTC. Luckily, he somewhat knows what the password is - he was trying to type out a password he has used before but supposedly butchered the spelling when inputting the pass. Hopefully he will be able to get by brute force the wallet with minor mispellings of the original password. From the research I have done, it appears that cracking the password is the only way.

Honestly I'm happy to hear its only 15 dollars move on.   Most likely even if you find someone reliable and trust worthy to do it, its not worth all the electricity, or time with the GPUs.

You could try it yourself, and read up as a learning experience.  But you will need to depending on length and I doubt he knows what position typo is in so it's a uphill battle.

[jeroenn13]

No seed. No private keys.
Im 99% sure there is no other way to get the coins back.

[jeffthebaker]

Hello Bitcointalk, I recently set my friend up with a Bitcoin wallet after he explained that he wanted to purchase something, and the sellers only accepted Bitcoin. He installed an Electrum wallet and I left the room for a bit while he set it up. I loaned him some Bitcoins, but when he went to send the coins, a problem arose. You see, my friend is dyslexic, and it turns out he typed his password incorrectly... twice. He doesn't know what his password is, and he needs it to send coins. No problem I thought, just use your wallet generation seed to get access to your private key.... he didn't save the words, and needs to enter his password to view them. He also didn't set up 2FA.

To summarize, he doesn't know his password, and did not take any necessary backup measures. Is there any way he can get access to his coins back?

Sadly it is likely it is gone forever.   He not saving seed is a huge mistake it warns on it I believe to save it safely.   And to forget password it is hard to explain how hard it is to brute force a single wallet.

Does he know generally what he typed as password?  If he does you might be able to find someone to try to get in it.  But you will need to have a good general idea of what password was or it will never happen.

So depends on how much he remembers of password.   But most likely gone forever.  Out of curiosity how much was lost?

Not a huge loss, only $15 or so worth of BTC. Luckily, he somewhat knows what the password is - he was trying to type out a password he has used before but supposedly butchered the spelling when inputting the pass. Hopefully he will be able to get by brute force the wallet with minor mispellings of the original password. From the research I have done, it appears that cracking the password is the only way.

Honestly I'm happy to hear its only 15 dollars move on.   Most likely even if you find someone reliable and trust worthy to do it, its not worth all the electricity, or time with the GPUs.

You could try it yourself, and read up as a learning experience.  But you will need to depending on length and I doubt he knows what position typo is in so it's a uphill battle.

Yup, I figured this was the case. Luckily I sent him the coins as a loan, and he told me he will still pay me back even though he lost access. I'm having to hold onto the wallet just in case. Right now, it's not worth the effort to regain access, but if Bitcoin shoots up in price at some point in the future, it very well could be worth his time.

[shorena]

It might be a bit late to answer here, but btcrecover[1] by btchris[2] might be something you want to try. It will only work if you know most of the password, but as I understood the situation this is exactly the case.

[1] https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover
[2] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1171