How to recover lost Bitcoin wallet Password?
There are many tales of lost or forgotten Bitcoin passwords, this guide written in July 2024 will help you go through the various wallet formats and best scenarios to recover your Bitcoin Wallet Password in 2024.
Can a lost Bitcoin password be recovered?
Yes it can. But it requires you to have certain information like an encrypted wallet backup file, a word sequence of 12–28 words or a device that has the wallet app installed. In some cases when a Shamir secret is used you can have sets of 20 or 33 words.
How do I recover a Bitcoin wallet?
You must first locate where is your backup file or what type of wallet you have. If you know your wallet address its additional help.
These are the mostly used Bitcoin wallets;
- blockchain.com (wallet.aes.json)
- Bitcoin core (wallet.dat)
- Electrum (backup_wallet.json)
- Schildbach Android wallet (bitcoin-wallet-backup.bin)
- Trezor Hardware wallet (12/24 word seedphrase + optional passphrase)
- BIP-39 Paper wallet (encrypted string starting with 6P)
- Armory Bitcoin wallet
- Jaxx Wallet
How to recover a blockchain.com or blockchain.info wallet
First you need to check if you have registered a wallet with blockchain.com using your e-mail address. Start by entering your email account on the login page and check if you receive an email. You could have more than one wallet, and if you do, there will be several wallet IDs in the mail.
You do this by going to blockchain.com/login
By entering your email blockchain will mail you your wallet ID.
When you got it, then you can trick the website to give you the encrypted wallet by using developer window in Chrome. (Check more tools-> developer tools tab)
Then when you entered the wrong password, you will see wallet ID in the Network tab, click on it, and check response.
The string called “Payload” is the one you look for. Copy paste it into a text editor and save into a textfile, name it wallet.json.
Then change every /” to “ and every \/ to /
Next head to Github to Jack the Ripper repo and download the extract scripts. This is the link: https://github.com/openwall/john
The script you need is blockchain2john.py. You will be later able to feed this script into Hashcat using mode 15200. If you set a secondary password the there is a different script and different mode. More about that in a separate article. If the wallet format is newer than 2.0 you will need to use the — -json additionally.
If you are not familiar with Hashcat, there are many good tutorials and discussion groups. Check them here: https://hashcat.net/wiki/
Although the standard mode is 15200 for Blockchain wallets version 2–4.
If you have one of the early Blockchain.info wallets then the mode is 12700, but beware. Hashcat has a known bug where you wallet password will not be found. This is due to the various iteration modes in vintage Blockchain wallets. Contact an expert like https://keychainx.io to help you with recovery of Blockchain v1 wallet passwords.
If you set a secondary password, then there is a folder in BTCRECOVER called extract-scripts. The script is called https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/extract-scripts/extract-blockchain-second-hash.py and if extracted correct should start with Y and end with =. The mode in hashcat is 18800.
How to recover lost Bitcoin with a Trezor that uses a passphrase?
Trezor or Trezor.io allows you to create a “secret” wallet even called the 25th word passphrase.
If you have set the additional passphrase then the seed or mnemonic words will not be able to access your funds. So what can be done?
First you will need the 12 or 24 seed words. If you set a Shamir Secret, then its a set of 20 or 33 words could be 2 to 6 separate word sets.
You can use a software called seedrecover.py from the btcrecover Github library. It can be downloaded from here: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/blob/master/seedrecover.py
Before you run it, you must install Python. It could be found here: https://www.python.org/
After installation you need to prepare, First you need the set of words, you will also be asked the first used address of the BTC or ETH.
The program will then try to find the corresponding word sets with your address.
How to recover Bitcoin Core wallet.dat?
Bitcoin core uses a DB format stored in a wallet.dat file. The file can hold several addresses and its usually encrypted using a password.
If you have the wallet.dat file, then use a script from the Jack The Ripper repo above named. Look for the file bitcoin2john.py.
Generate the hash for hashcat by typing:
python bitcoin2john.py wallet.dat > outputhash.txt
The output hash can be used to find the password using various techniques and the hash mode 11300. The same mode can actually be used for Dogecoin and Litecoin wallet.dat files as they are forks of Bitcoin and use the same format.
More about Hashcat and different attacks check their webpage.
What is a Bitcoin Paper wallet?
A Bitcoin Paper Wallet strings starts with 6P. Its actually your encrypted private key in WIF that could be loaded into Bitcoin Core, Exodus App or Electrum among others.
The hash is very slow but could be brute forced if you enter a list of known passwords and then run an open source tool called BTCRECOVER. It could be found here: https://github.com/gurnec/btcrecover/tree/master
How to crack an Electrum Bitcoin wallet?
The process is same as Blockchain or Bitcoin Core. You need first to extract the hash from the Jack The Ripper Github using electrum2john.py.
Then download Hashcat 6.0 from https://hashcat.net/hashcat/
There are various modes, depending on which version of Electrum the wallet was created with. You can use the command: hashcat — help to see all the modes, here is a short write up about the different electrum modes:
16600 -> Electrum Wallet (Salt-Type 1–3)
21700 -> Electrum Wallet (Salt-Type 4)
21800 -> Electrum Wallet (Salt-Type 5)
So you really need to know what salt type or try all of them. This is used by the -m flag in Hashcat.
Good luck!
Conclution:
There is always a way to recover a lost Bitcoin Wallet password. You just need to prepare right and have the right tools.
If you get stuck or need help, you can always contact an expert like KeychainX by visiting https://keychainx.io or write and email to: keychainx@protonmail.com
Disclaimer! This article is written by KeychainX wallet recovery services in July 2024. We will update this page with never wallet types. If you need help dont hesitate to send us an email or contact on telegram @keychainx