Ghost address 1HT7xU2Ngenf7D4yocz2SAcnNLW7rK8d4E appeared in my wallet.dat

[rusty shackleford]

hey guys

strange thing just happened

after another -rescan I found mysterious address 1HT7xU2Ngenf7D4yocz2SAcnNLW7rK8d4E in my wallet with full balance of 69.77598763 BTC aboard (dated 2011), which is kinda of weird since I created this wallet back in 2014 and never imported any third private keys in it.

this is what validateaddress shows

validateaddress 1HT7xU2Ngenf7D4yocz2SAcnNLW7rK8d4E

{
"isvalid" : true,
"address" : "1HT7xU2Ngenf7D4yocz2SAcnNLW7rK8d4E",
"ismine" : true,
"isscript" : false,
"pubkey" : "",
"iscompressed" : false
}

and I do able dumping the private key for the address...however I cannot sign the transaction due to a lack of the pubkey, as quoted above

what is that?

[BTCDDev]

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/445

Address '1HT7xU2Ngenf7D4yocz2SAcnNLW7rK8d4E' is 'b472a266d0bd89c13706a4132ccfb16f7c3b9fcb', or ripemd160(sha256("")).

[gmaxwell]

Is this wallet encrypted?

Would you be willing and/or able to test a patch?

[rusty shackleford]

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/445

Address '1HT7xU2Ngenf7D4yocz2SAcnNLW7rK8d4E' is 'b472a266d0bd89c13706a4132ccfb16f7c3b9fcb', or ripemd160(sha256("")).

seen this. thanks. still, how it ended up in my wallet? with the private key in it? or it's just some fake private key?

Is this wallet encrypted?

Would you be willing and/or able to test a patch?

thanks for getting back to me

yes, my wallet.dat is encrypted with a 128-bit password.
 
At first, I was unable to unlock it with the latest version 0.11.1 and so I downgraded my client back to 0.9.3 - version, my wallet was initially created. 0.9.3 worked out just fine and unlocked the wallet, which allows be dumping the private key for the address. However, importing the private key into a new wallet did nothing, since the corresponding pubkey is NULL. Signing the test transaction of 0.001 BTC using the funds on the address (via coin control) failed as well.

Yes, sure I'd love to help you guys out fixing it!

[rusty shackleford]

I will now try to compute public key/address out of the private key which it shows me.

[amaclin]

I will now try to compute public key/address out of the private key which it shows me.

Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky!

[dooglus]

I will now try to compute public key/address out of the private key which it shows me.

The 'wallet details' tab of http://bitaddress.org/ can do that for you.

[gmaxwell]

seen this. thanks. still, how it ended up in my wallet? with the private key in it? or it's just some fake private key?

Right your wallet has an encrypted key object in it with an empty pubkey.  It's not clear how this could have happened.  Has the wallet ever become corrupted, have you ever used any special wallet utilities on it?

In any case, the entry is meaningless and should be ignored.

yes, my wallet.dat is encrypted with a 128-bit password.

Right. The code path for non-encrypted keys checks the pubkey already; so I couldn't see how this was possible unless it was encrypted.

Can you try https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6906 and see if it rejects this? If you're not compiling it for yourself, please tell me what OS you're running and I'll get a test binary for you.
 

At first, I was unable to unlock it with the latest version 0.11.1

Right, when it decrypts it checks that the private key and public keys agree, finds that they don't and then rejects the corrupted wallet.

[rusty shackleford]

The 'wallet details' tab of http://bitaddress.org/ can do that for you.

Thanks! You saved me a lot of time executing python script on windows. So, bitaddress shows different address 1E7SR8x3FdzMPGpeiyTqQB892WXPnKcy2a for the given private key. To check its algorithm I entered other private key from my wallet, and this time it worked flawlessly and displayed me the exact address I have in my wallet.dat. So, that private key for the address 1HT7xU2Ngenf7D4yocz2SAcnNLW7rK8d4E is not correct. However, when I try to validateaddress 1E7SR8x3FdzMPGpeiyTqQB892WXPnKcy2a, which is supposed to be the right address for that private key, it couldn't be found in my wallet..such a mess...

Right your wallet has an encrypted key object in it with an empty pubkey.  It's not clear how this could have happened.  Has the wallet ever become corrupted, have you ever used any special wallet utilities on it?

Yes, I experienced corrupted wallet issue and I resolved it via -salvagewallet on a standard bitcoin core for windows. No, I never used any other utilities apart from the bitcoin core for linux and windows. I also did several rescans. This wallet has thousands of addresses and hundreds of thousands of transactions, its size is about 0.8Gb.

Can you try https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6906 and see if it rejects this? If you're not compiling it for yourself, please tell me what OS you're running and I'll get a test binary for you.

Could you please compile a win64 or win32 binary for me?
 

Right, when it decrypts it checks that the private key and public keys agree, finds that they don't and then rejects the corrupted wallet.

Bitcoin core 0.9.3. doesn't have this feature? Check on private and public keys?

[gmaxwell]

Yes, I experienced corrupted wallet issue and I resolved it via -salvagewallet on a standard bitcoin core for windows. No, I never used any other utilities apart from the bitcoin core for linux and windows. I also did several rescans. This wallet has thousands of addresses and hundreds of thousands of transactions, its size is about 0.8Gb.

Great, may be a bug in salvagwallet where it's willing to add empty keys. I'll look into that...  potentially a result of the same reading code that accepts them at runtime.

Could you please compile a win64 or win32 binary for me?

Will do.  I'll let you know shortly. (Sent PM with a link to a binary)

Bitcoin core 0.9.3. doesn't have this feature? Check on private and public keys?

Correct, in versions before 0.10.0 (I think) we only checked the first key on decrypt. Later versions check all of them once per execution, as a result of PR#4670.