Restored Electrum ( Andriod) Cold Wallet but It churns Different Master Pub. Key

[Ummy]

Greetings, I wonder if someone could possibly help me?

I have Electrum wallets on two andriod phones. One serves as a cold wallet and the other serves a watch-only wallet. When I need to send bitcoin to an external address, I simply raise a transaction on my watch-only wallet and send it to my cold wallet ( via OR code) for approval. Following approval, I send the transaction back to my watch-only wallet for subsequent broadcast. This has always been a straight forward process.

However, this morning Electrum would not start on my cold wallet. I deleted the apk and reinstalled it. I then proceeded to restore my cold wallet using my seed. The problem I am now faced with is that the master public key on my cold wallet is not the same as that on my watch-only wallet. I would appreciate help on how to proceed so that my historic watch-only wallet is in sync with my new cold wallet.

Thanking you in advance.

[1714641460]

1714641460

[jackg]

Do you know the version numbers of each of your wallets?
Where was your seed stored also: a piece of paper, your brain, a usb stick, as a screenshot on the airgapped phone?
Also what version of the phone are you running, has it remained the same throughout and are both versions the same.

[Ummy]

Do you know the version numbers of each of your wallets?
Where was your seed stored also: a piece of paper, your brain, a usb stick, as a screenshot on the airgapped phone?
Also what version of the phone are you running, has it remained the same throughout and are both versions the same.

Hi jackq, at the moment both wallets are version 3.2.3. The cold wallet's version was only updated to 3.2.3 yesterday when the previous version would not open.

My seed was check for accuracy by a second person before I wrote it down in a book.

The andriod version of my watch-only phone is 6.0.1 and the cold wallet is running 6.0


Thank you for reaching out.

[jackg]

Maybe it's something to do with the update, can you downgrade it?

On some utility file managers, you can usually find a screen to list all the content (images, audio, video)...
if you can find that, click 'applications' and 'not installed' then it'll show EVERY app you have ever installed/downloaded to your device.

[Abdussamad]

Maybe your watch only wallet was hacked. Simply replacing the wallet with a watch-only version of a wallet the attacker controlled would have done the trick. Perhaps it was malware or perhaps someone with physical access to the device did it.

That version of android is very old and is vulnerable to malware. Simply connecting to a public wifi network might be enough to infect that device. 

[idoB]

Try the following:

• Try to restore the deleted apk on the signer android using this toolset: https://www.easeus.com/android-data-recovery/recover-deleted-apk-files-android.html. If successful, try entering the seed again. If the resulting xpub is again different, chances are the seed is wrong, skip to the third point.
• Go to https://download.electrum.org/, search for the wallet version that you used to create the seed (based on date), download, install, create a new wallet from your known seed and compare the xpub.
• Another verctor: seeds can have an additional secret passphrase that is added to the seed words Electrum generates. Think hard if you used such an additional passphrase (it isn't supposed to be written anywhere) and if so, if you possibly misspelled it (capitals, spaces)

If you are able to restore everything - congrats! However, look into a more robust operating system for the signer. Android is a toy OS compared to Linux, Windows, MacOS.

 

[jackg]

I'd actually differ and say the setup he has is quite a good one.

As long as you check the transaction before you sign it and you verify you have the right apk installed and the airgapped device NEVER sees the internet then you're good!

[Abdussamad]

He says on reddit that he didn't extend the seed: https://www.reddit.com/r/Electrum/comments/9lle9r/problems_restoring_electrum_cold_wallet_using_seed/

[idoB]

If he restores the same environment that created the wallet, and enters the seed that's written in his book and he's getting a different xpub, it's very likely he extended the seed with a passphrase.