Some 24-word mnemonics recovered from csv file return an invalid checksum

[pjkgijp]

Some seeds I was able to recover from a csv return an invalid checksum.

I have some seeds written between a lesser than an greather than sign. Others are written with an asterisk before it. There is something wrong with these.

Example records:

"<word1  word2  ...  word24>" gives checksum error
"*<word1  word2  ...  word24>" gives checksum error
"*word1 word2 ...  word24" gives checksum error
"word1 word2 ...  word24" is fine.

Does anyone know what's going on here? Is the order mixed in some way? Because all individual words are valid BIP39 words. Is there some sort of algorithm used to mix the order?

I did use BTCRecover to try reorder the words with no luck so far.

Thanks in advance

[DireWolfM14]

Some seeds I was able to recover from a csv return an invalid checksum.

I have some seeds written between a lesser than an greather than sign. Others are written with an asterisk before it. There is something wrong with these.

Example records:

"<word1  word2  ...  word24>" gives checksum error
"*<word1  word2  ...  word24>" gives checksum error
"*word1 word2 ...  word24" gives checksum error
"word1 word2 ...  word24" is fine.

Does anyone know what's going on here? Is the order mixed in some way? Because all individual words are valid BIP39 words. Is there some sort of algorithm used to mix the order?

I did use BTCRecover to try reorder the words with no luck so far.

Thanks in advance

They could be in the wrong order, or the 24th word could be wrong all together.  Which wallet are you trying to recover them in?  It's possible they are Electrum generated seed phrases, in which case they will not be Bip39 compatible.

[Findingnemo]

Others are written with an asterisk before it. There is something wrong with these.

Special characters such as '*'(asterisk) are not part of BIP39 words so it's either you or you have used some tool to generate the 24 words seeds for you.

Example records:

"<word1  word2  ...  word24>" gives checksum error
"*<word1  word2  ...  word24>" gives checksum error
"*word1 word2 ...  word24" gives checksum error
"word1 word2 ...  word24" is fine.

Means all the 24 words are BPI39 valid but it's in the wrong orderor even possible that you replaced with some other words since you mentioned * used on it and those words probably stored in a different file that need to be replaced in that place.

Does anyone know what's going on here? Is the order mixed in some way? Because all individual words are valid BIP39 words. Is there some sort of algorithm used to mix the order?

As I said the words are mixed in some way and only you or whoever created the words can say in which way. But all the words are valid you can recover it with BTCRecover pretty quickly with decent computational power.

[pooya87]

Some seeds I was able to recover from a csv return an invalid checksum.

Does anyone know what's going on here?

For anyone to know what is going on, you need to first explain what this CSV file is, where it came from, who generated it and how?!

[Mia Chloe]

Well I think issue lies in the formating and encoding of the seed phrases. firstly the angle brackets (< and >) are likely what's causing the checksum error. And i think it's because the both characters are not part of the BIP39 wordlist.

What recovery tool are you making use of op? the asterisk (*) might be a some kind of prefix indicating compression or even encryption so you need to check if your wallet or recovery tool supports this format
Also note that BIP39 seeds follow a specific order so If the words are valid but in the wrong order, the checksum will still fail.
Also check if they were stored in UTF-8 encoding format that may be an issue too.

For anyone to know what is going on, you need to first explain what this CSV file is, where it came from, who generated it and how?!

Exactly I'm pretty much just trying to guess the problem. Op should provide more information on his encoding format and the recovery tool he's attempting to use.

[ABCbits]

I did use BTCRecover to try reorder the words with no luck so far.

It's not surprising. If you don't know correct position of any word, you're performing brute-force on 24! or about 6.2e+23 possible combination.

Well I think issue lies in the formating and encoding of the seed phrases. firstly the angle brackets (< and >) are likely what's causing the checksum error. And i think it's because the both characters are not part of the BIP39 wordlist.

But in that case, the wallet or recovery software should show message that the input text contain invalid word (not in BIP39 or Electrum word list).

[pjkgijp]

I think the (*) and (<>) symbols represent some type of ordering.
If I remove those symbols and take only the 24 words, the order seems to be wrong.
The CSV file was a dump of the database from a website.

[pooya87]

I think the (*) and (<>) symbols represent some type of ordering.
If I remove those symbols and take only the 24 words, the order seems to be wrong.
The CSV file was a dump of the database from a website.

That could mean a lot of things. The <> symbols could simply indicate a certain permutation of the seed words not the actual seed words itself.

[nc50lc]

If anyone want a few more information on OP's case, he has a reply on this thread: /index.php?topic=5479083.msg64629350#msg64629350
I previously advised him to create a new topic (this) since the core issue turned out to be quite off-topic.

The CSV file was a dump of the database from a website.

Which website specifically?
The best way to help is if anyone managed to reproduce a similar ".csv" file with a test wallet on the same platform.

[ABCbits]

I think the (*) and (<>) symbols represent some type of ordering.
If I remove those symbols and take only the 24 words, the order seems to be wrong.

Whether the 24 words follows BIP 39[1] or Electrum Seed Version System[2], such symbol isn't mentioned on both specification.

The CSV file was a dump of the database from a website.

What website? Are there any documentation or information about the database or website itself?

[1] https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0039.mediawiki
[2] https://electrum.readthedocs.io/en/latest/seedphrase.html

[pjkgijp]

I do not have any information about the website nor how the seeds could be generated.


The only thing I know about the website is that it's a WordPress website.

[LoyceV]

For anyone to know what is going on, you need to first explain what this CSV file is, where it came from, who generated it and how?!

This!

I do not have any information about the website nor how the seeds could be generated.

The only thing I know about the website is that it's a WordPress website.

So you're wasting everyone's time. Anyone can create a seed, anyone can create some random seed words. That doesn't give it any value.

[ABCbits]

The only thing I know about the website is that it's a WordPress website.

With so little information, i only could suggest you search list of WordPress plugin about cryptocurrency. You can narrow it to cryptocurrency plugin which claim to have feature to create wallet, 24 recovery words or send coin automatically. But it could take long time (since https://wordpress.org/plugins/ shows 383 for keyword "bitcoin" and 358 for keyword "crypto") with possibility you couldn't find any relevant plugin.