Can I create new private key

[Erty5678]

Hi guys.  I want to get the details of my paper wallet from an offline bitaddress.org.  I entered an invalid  private key and a pop up window had the following:" the text you entered is not a valid key.  Would you like to use the entered text as a paraphrase and create a private key using a SHA256 hash of the paraphrase?  Warning:  choosing a strong paraphrase is important to avoid brute force attempts to guess your paraphrase and steal your bitcoins".  Please what do you advise.  Thanks.

[DaCryptoRaccoon]

Hi guys.  I want to get the details of my paper wallet from an offline bitaddress.org.  I entered an invalid  private key and a pop up window had the following:" the text you entered is not a valid key.  Would you like to use the entered text as a paraphrase and create a private key using a SHA256 hash of the paraphrase?  Warning:  choosing a strong paraphrase is important to avoid brute force attempts to guess your paraphrase and steal your bitcoins".  Please what do you advise.  Thanks.

Your private key should look like one of the following below..

Bitcoin private keys (this section is largely based on data from bitaddress.org)

    WIF (Wallet Import Format) (51 characters base58, starting with "5").
    Example: 5KMWmYkn5YWkJnUDG4utD9L1HXQv3DBseqqCGsQXmthcEerbA7k

    WIF Compressed (52 characters base58, starting with "K" or "L".
    Example: L41YPdADy46J9Vh77WGR2bktFwEZ6knza2Xim3Urq9CEWynkkLgn

    Note: both WIF and WIF Compressed are derived from the same private key, but result in different Bitcoin addresses.
    Private Key Hexadecimal (64 characters [0-9A-F]) (less common).
    Example: CA9A061710B8BC582E1B8BB60D0F3F2751791888AB5C18737620087ABDF74A05

    Private Key (44 characters base64) (less common).
    Example: ypoGFxC4vFguG4u2DQ8/J1F5GIirXBhzdiAIer33SgU=

    Mini private key (30 characters base58, starting with "S", see wiki).
    Example: Sf2i92UoH3kMooYXHdDQ4YQvLTdPrQ

    BIP38 password encrypted private key (58 characters base58, starting with "6P", see bitcoinpaperwallet.com).
    Example: 6PRNqE9p5hTUgNy5cxXnrfVKZPX5Qz8sqB7oNfDT9N3YdCM7rqRxruxkN1

    Private key missing checksum
    Example: 5KMWmYkn5YWkJnUDG4utD9L1HXQv3DBseqqCGsQXmthcEerbA7k

 Credit to LoyceV for the list from this topic.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4959742.0

[Erty5678]

Hi.  My private key starts with L AND is 52 characters.  My paper wallet public address starts with 1 and is 34 characters.  Unfortunately  I wrote is down on a paper and it seems I may have made a mistake.  I have been trying to spot where the mistake has occurred by changing some possible characters.  That is when the pop window appeared that has the statement I made above.  So I do not know if I should click ok or cancel.   Thanks.

[pooya87]

Hi.  My private key starts with L AND is 52 characters.  My paper wallet public address starts with 1 and is 34 characters.  Unfortunately  I wrote is down on a paper and it seems I may have made a mistake.  I have been trying to spot where the mistake has occurred by changing some possible characters.  That is when the pop window appeared that has the statement I made above.  So I do not know if I should click ok or cancel.   Thanks.

you should click cancel because clicking OK will do something else that you don't want (will create a new key pair with the input string as a passphrase).

the base58 character set that your private key is using are these

Code:

123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz

it is upper and lower case letters and numbers excluding: 0 (zero), O (capital o), I (capital i) and l (lower case L). check to see if you miss-typed anything.

[nc50lc]

I entered an invalid  private key and a pop up window had the following:

You mean this pop-up window?


It's pretty self explanatory.
Since you've entered an invalid private key, the site's asking you if you want to make a "Brainwallet" out of it as a new private key and address pair.
Yeah that could go over any newbies' head or non-English speaker's, it's pretty unnecessary option and should be depreciated  from the code.

Do what pooya87 told you, click cancel.

[TheArchaeologist]

Hi.  My private key starts with L AND is 52 characters.  

This indicates  your private key is in the format of a WIF (Wallet Import Format) for a compressed private key. Since all the signs (correct length, starting with either L or K) indicate you have a valid key chances are big you made a typo in entering the key.

Since the WIF you are trying to enter is encoded in Base-58 certain characters can not be in the address like the number 0 (zero), capital O, lower l.
Please check if the key (WIF) you entered) only consists of these characters:

Code:

123456789ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijkmnopqrstuvwxyz

[seoincorporation]

I entered an invalid  private key and a pop up window had the following:" the text you entered is not a valid key.

This mean your private key have a problem, if you write it by hand be careful with 1, l, I... or other similar characters, but if you do it direct with a QR. each wallet have different steps to import privatekeys:
Electrum: https://support.btcprivate.org/403137-Bitcoin-Private-Electrum-Wallet---How-to-sweepimport-Private-Key
Bitcoin core: https://www.bitcoin.com/guides/how-to-import-and-export-bitcoin-private-keys
Blockchain info: https://blog.blockchain.com/2014/06/18/tutorial-the-import-export-feature-in-your-blockchain-wallet/

Would you like to use the entered text as a paraphrase and create a private key using a SHA256 hash of the paraphrase?

Is better if you fix it your self before involve some one in the problem  But we will help you to find a solution.

[LoyceV]

I entered an invalid  private key

I wrote is down on a paper and it seems I may have made a mistake.

Either one (or both!) of the quotes above are your problem. If you typed it wrong, just type it again. Try a few more times until you're absolutely sure you didn't type it wrong.

If your typing isn't the problem, then your writing is the problem. I'm pretty sure there is software to try some variations of all characters (brute-force). I only have experience with software that tests all options when you know at which location the characters are missing.
If the right software doesn't exist, you'll have to write it yourself (or have someone do it). Be careful who you trust!

If you made more than one mistake writing it down, the number of possibilities quickly goes up. Whether or not it's worth brute-forcing will depend on how many Bitcoins your paper wallet holds.

As a test, write down 5KMWmYkn5YWkJnUDG4utD9L1HXQv3DBseqqCGsQXmthcEerbA7k, then type it again. Compare the result, and see where you made mistakes. This can give you a good idea of how many mistakes you may have made.
DO NOT post your own private key!

[bob123]

Bruteforcing the private key with 1 misstyped character can be done within one or two seconds. Thats 58*52 (= 3016) combinations.
Bruteforcing 2 characters does need to check the space of ( (52 choose 2) * 47 * 47 =) 4.308.174 combinations. This also can be done at home easily.
With 3, thats ( (52 choose 3) * 47 * 47 * 47 = ) 4.092.765.300 private keys to check. It starts to get rough here.

Basically, for N missing characters: (52 choose N ) * 47^N


If you have misstyped 1 or 2 characters the time it takes to bruteforce the private key is very low. Definitely worth a try.
But with a higher number of chars, it pretty much gets impossible.

You just need tool to check all possibilities for valid private keys. Because of the checksum the majority of these keys won't be valid.

[HCP]

There is a relatively simple python script floating around that bruteforces a 1 char mistake in a matter of seconds.

Refer: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2s1y84/reward_wrote_down_my_private_key_wrong/cnlelwg

It should be fairly trivial to modify it to find a 2 char mistake... But as pointed out the time to execute would increase quite significantly.

[pooya87]

Bruteforcing the private key with 1 misstyped character can be done within one or two seconds. Thats 58*52 (= 3016) combinations.

try milliseconds if not less. 3k keys is nothing really. in fact it took 0.101 seconds on my PC to brute force ~3k keys. and that's just on my unoptimized code and most of the timing is just overhead not the process itself
about 200k keys takes about 1 second for me.

Bruteforcing 2 characters does need to check the space of ( (52 choose 2) * 47 * 47 =) 4.308.174 combinations. This also can be done at home easily.
With 3, thats ( (52 choose 3) * 47 * 47 * 47 = ) 4.092.765.300 private keys to check. It starts to get rough here.

Basically, for N missing characters: (52 choose N ) * 47^N

nice math, i was actually thinking how it is calculated. thanks.
but it usually isn't this way though, you know where among 52 chars you have made the mistake. also the first two ones being 5H, 5K, 5J (or L/K for compressed keys) shouldn't be counted.