~

[jonathan]

edit; lost a btc wallet, then recovered it using awesome recovery software from makomk:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=25091.msg344382#msg344382

[Litt]

no worries. Just use the backup you already made before you moved around your wallets and started deleting stuff then let it confirm the blockchain again overnight.

[Djao]

no worries. Just use the backup you already made before you moved around your wallets and started deleting stuff then let it confirm the blockchain again overnight.

I guess, he forgot about the backup part ...

[jashan]

hello, i was experimenting with moving a little btc money around from one address to another. After doing this i deleted one of the wallet.dat files. Ten minutes later, i moved all my bitcoins to one of my addresses. The trouble is, the wallet with that address was the one i deleted. And i deleted it with linux shred, so it really is gone. Are my btc lost?

Very likely. Sorry to hear that, hope you didn't burn too many Bitoins. But it's kind of like having paper-cash, moving it around different wallets and then throwing one of those wallets into fire.

The difference is that physical wallets are really hard to back up (I'm not aware of any technology that successfully does this). Digital wallets are really easy to back up. One just has to think of it.

That said ... it will be great once the Bitcoin client has some mechanisms for backups / encryption built in.

[Prze_koles]

So you basically deleted your own wallet. Nice one.

[jashan]

the wallet.dat file that has the address i sent the btc to, is gone.
...
of course, the file from whence the btc were sent is still very much here on my box right now. But the bitcoin gui is showing an ominous unconfirmed debit.

So, what you basically did is this:

You have Wallet A and Wallet B (think of physical wallets). Wallet B is a new wallet you just bought. It's empty. Then you take some dollar notes from Wallet A (which is full of dollar notes) and put it to Wallet B ("the address I sent the BTC to" = "Wallet B"). So the dollar notes were in Wallet B. Then you took Wallet B and burnt it to ashes.

If you had a backup of Wallet B (done magically with some molecule duplication technology), you'd have Wallet B1 and B2, both providing access to the Bitcoins you sent to Wallet B. Then when you burn B1, it's not a big deal - you still got B2.

In any case: Since you took the Bitcoins / dollar notes out of Wallet A, they're no longer there. So, if you completely emptied Wallet A, you could safely delete / burn Wallet A (however, if anyone ever sends you BTC to an address from Wallet A, those will be lost forever because no one can send them anywhere anymore).

[germanMNY]

And i deleted it with linux shred, so it really is gone. Are my btc lost?

Have you got a hard disk or a SSD/FlashHDD?

[jashan]

I'm afraid that answers some of the suggestions:

And i deleted it with linux shred, so it really is gone.

If you had just "deleted" it, it would be kind of like putting it into a really huge, ugly, dirty trashcan. In that case, you could dig into that trashcan and maybe recover it. But my understanding is that you've literally burned it.

[germanMNY]

Maybe he could dump / freeze the ram? Is it possible to copy the swap-file (maybe with a live-cd)?

[Litt]

hi litt,

just to make it clear:

the wallet.dat file that has the address i sent the btc to, is gone. The wallet was only there so that i could experiment with transacting btc from addy to addy. And when i was happy with my efforts, i burn the test materials forever. right? When i deleted it, i *wanted* it deleted. It's gone.

of course, the file from whence the btc were sent is still very much here on my box right now. But the bitcoin gui is showing an ominous unconfirmed debit.

is that clear? Thanks for your concern.

Well, I was hoping it was already given... I assumed that you already made a backup encrypted copy of your original wallet you started with before you began testing anything. If you didn't then you are shit out of luck I'm afraid.

[dayfall]

You say it is an unconfirmed transaction?  Well, I would shutdown Bitcoin.  Make a copy of you wallet!  Restore a copy (you do have one right?).  Then restart bitcoin with -rescan.  Your coins might not have been sent yet.  It happened to me.  The network fouled up and so my transaction was effectively canceled.  Not that I wanted it to be, but in your case you can always hope.

And check block explorer to see if your deleted account got the coins.

Why burn an unused wallet, anyway?

[n0m4d]

Please please please people - DON'T do this sort of thing with "real" coins.

There's a testnet in a box that will allow you to play in a sandbox all you want:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/testnet-in-a-box/

There but for the grace...   I've only managed to make boneheaded market moves so far.

[ribuck]

After you send bitcoins to a public key (a "receiving address") and the transaction is confirmed into the block chain, the only way those bitcoins can be spent is with the corresponding private key.

Unless you can recover that private key from a copy in disk or RAM, the BTC cannot ever be spent.

In theory, if you could quickly grab the majority of the network's hashing power, you could perhaps rewrite the block chain to remove your original send, in which case the coins would be available to you again. But realistically this cannot be done without control of the largest mining pools. As 40 minutes or more has passed already, even that window is closing now.

Sorry to hear about your loss.

[ribuck]

I just saw your post from 7th December 2010 which ended with the words "Where ever will this lead?".

Ouch.

[allinvain]

it's gone to 13fEJojp1mkDRpCQ4t2eTXKiRHvMz6hYjQ
i'm devastated.

I'm sorry to hear about your loss. I hope you did not lose a large amount, and that you can quickly recover the funds.

[piuk]

You never know, in 100,000 years time, someone might generate a collision and send you your coins back.

[riush]

just out of curiosity, as long as there are no confirmations, what exactly would happen if the client would have an 'undo' button that generates a double-spend to myself? would both transactions be invalid? if not, could the transaction to myself have a higher fee to motivate the miner to pick it over the other one?

[N12]

Having read about multiple early adopters losing large amount of Bitcoins (messing up backups, malware, etc.), I wonder if humans in general can actually deal with this.

Is 100% vigilance possible at all times?

[germanMNY]

man i'm googling "freeze ram" right now. I'm running debian squeeze.

Please don't work with the PC! Use another pc to google!

Here is a "Cold Boot Attack Tool for Linux" to dump the ram. But this is very risky. Maybe there are a way to dump the ram without to turn off the pc.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/10289

[germanMNY]

RAM DUMP UNDER LINUX:

System memory dumps on Linux

http://www.theknotter.net/system-memory-dumps-on-linux/

Code:

#!/bin/sh

if [[ $# -ne 0 ]]; then
	echo "USAGE: $0"
	exit 1
fi

grep '^[^ ].*$' /proc/iomem | grep 'System RAM' | while read -r LINE; do
	X0="0x`echo $LINE | sed 's|^\([^-]*\)-.*|\1|'`"
	X1="0x`echo $LINE | sed 's|^[^-]*-\([^ ]*\) .*|\1|'`"

	R0=$(( ($(printf %d $X0) / 4096)))
	R1=$(( ($(printf %d $X1) / 4096)))

	if [ $(( $(printf %d $X1) % 4096 )) -ne 0 ]; then
		R1=$(( $R1 + 1 ))
	fi

	echo "CHUNK: $X0-$X1"
	dd if=/dev/mem bs=4096 skip=$R0 count=$(( $R1 - $R0  ))
done

Code:

Dest$ nc -l -p 1337 > dump
Orig$ ./mcat_poc.sh | nc dest 1337