When was the last time that you checked that you actually correctly remember the passphrase for your encrypted bitcoin wallet? And that it can be successfully decrypted with that password, allowing you to spend your bitcoins? There are plenty of stories out there of people who have forgotten or misplaced their wallet password...
walletrecoveryservices.com

Indeed, often true. In this case, however, this is a bona fide service to help people who have lost their wallet passwords.
Similar to scripts used previously on this forum.
Have a read on the website, you'll see that I'm not suggesting that people send me their whole wallet (which would potentially allow me to steal their bitcoins if I was a dodgy character (which I'm not)). Instead, they can send me just the bits of the wallet information that allows for the decryption of the password, without exposing themselves to any risk of theft.

Cheers,
Dave

Yes, yes, very funny
However, in spite of how it may appear, this is a legit service. See my earlier reply. I'm not asking anyone to send in their entire wallet.

Without endorsing his service, I will accept as plausible the notion that you can extract just enough information out of a wallet file that would allow cracking the password but not accessing the funds.  The method of making sure only the correct portion of the wallet file gets extracted is the part that deserves good peer review, but I think the idea (possibility) itself is legit.

Basically a wallet is protected with a random number key, and then this random number key is encrypted in a special master password record that is encrypted with the password itself.  The random number key is generated when the wallet is created and isn't useful by itself for accessing coins without the actual encrypted Bitcoin private key records to go with it.  If you can rip that master record out of the wallet, you can crack at the password with no possibility of access to funds.

That would be nice if you could upload a chunk of your wallet that the person brute forces. I'm sure all those spare graphic cards are useful for other things than mining!

Pretty cool idea. Thanks for offering a great service to the community.

Of course as casascius pointed out, someone sending you the extracted wallet bits necessary for cracking would have to make sure no info enabling access to funds is leaked.

After a while and some users have regained access to their funds, trust will build.

Instead of yelling "scam" all over this thread as a kind-of knee-jerk reaction, people should try to find possible flaws in the method instead (after they have actually looked at how this works).

Lazy scam-accusers are lazy.

Thankyou, Molecular.
You restore my faith in the bitcoin community.

Yes, absolutely. And I haven't taken offense at the aspersions cast on my service (or my character ). I myself would be skeptical of similar services. It is, in fact, really fortunate (was it planned?) that the structure of the encrypted bitcoin wallet is such that it allows for the 'remote' brute force decryption of the password by a third party without needing to trust that third party with all the bitcoin addresses in the wallet.
Regards,
Dave