Leger Nano S recovery phrase

[Ovsekari]

I hope someone here can help me.  I'm new here so I apologize if I'm posting in the wrong place.  I lost access to my ledger nano s wallet after 3 failed password attempts.  I tried to recover it with my 24 word recovery phrase but is says "invalid passphrase".  I thought I wrote it down correctly but I guess I didn't.   There is no way now I can find out which word is incorrect.  I checked my recovery phrase sheet against the list on the github and all of the words are there and spelled correctly.  Since it fills it out for you automatically after you type first 2-3 letters, there is no way I can misspell any these words.  Most of them I even remember when I was writing them down so I don't know why it give me "invalid".  I believe I have the worst case scenario here but is there anything I can do or my funds are gone forever?  I need to basically somehow to retrieve my phrase.  I have my BTC and ETH addresses when I sent it to leger so is there a way to recover my phrases.  What is this brute force thing that some of you here are talking about?  Please help I'm going crazy.  THanks!

[HCP]

There are quite a lot of similar words in the 2048 word list used by the Ledger (and most hardware wallets)...

ie. kit, kite, kid, kind
act, action, actor, actress, actual
clap, claw, clay

You get the idea... So it's possible that you've simply written down a "similar" word in your list of 24 by mistake.

I have previously had success finding one or two word errors by using the seedrecover.py written by gurnec: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/docs/Seedrecover_Quick_Start_Guide.md

You'll need to be able to install python and a couple of library dependencies... but the instructions listed are fairly easy to follow.

[Ovsekari]

Thank you for your reply.  I'll read these instruction to try to find out the write words but in case it doesn't work what are my other choices?  Hire a cryptographer or a hacker?  I'm not too technical so if I need help with these instructions can I ask you?

Thanks.

[J. Cooper]

Thank you for your reply.  I'll read these instruction to try to find out the write words but in case it doesn't work what are my other choices?  Hire a cryptographer or a hacker?  I'm not too technical so if I need help with these instructions can I ask you?

Thanks.

I don't think hiring a cryptographer or a hacker will make much of a difference. If it was possible to somehow brute force a bitcoin address, a lot of lost bitcoins would've been recovered or stolen. So no it's not possible to brute force your address. I'm not sure how much crypto you've got in there but I hope you can somehow recover your original pass phrase otherwise there isn't a lot of hope left for you.

[Ovsekari]

I found incorrect word.  I wrote down "stuff" not "staff".  This is fucking crazy. 

[digitalmelbourne]

I found incorrect word.  I wrote down "stuff" not "staff".  This is fucking crazy. 

you should get yourself a cryptosteel 

[BitcoinNewsMagazine]

I found incorrect word.  I wrote down "stuff" not "staff".  This is fucking crazy. 

Before committing significant funds to any hardware wallet it is a good idea to wipe it and recover from seed to confirm you wrote everything down correctly and you have confidence you can recover your funds if you lost the hardware wallet.

[HCP]

I found incorrect word.  I wrote down "stuff" not "staff".  This is fucking crazy. 

Yeah... it's pretty easy to do... Glad you managed to find the mistake. Sometimes it isn't quite so easy

And what BNM suggested is very sound advice... make sure you can actually recover from seed before committing significant funds to the device! It will certainly give you some extra piece of mind that everything is working as it should