Let’s begin exploring with the world of cryptocurrency and learn how to recover lost funds using BTCRecover a tool that can save your digital assets from oblivion.
To kick things off: what is BTCRecover? It’s an open-source command line tool designed for password recovery, private key repair, and address lookup in various cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dash, Dogecoin, Litecoin, and more. In this guide, we will focus on the basics of using BTCRecover to recover lost wallets.
Before we get started, let’s make sure you have everything you need:
1. A computer with a Unix-like operating system (Linux or macOS) Windows users can use WSL or Cygwin for this purpose.
2. BTCRecover installed on your machine. You can download it from the official website, GitHub, or install it via pip.
3. A list of passwords you used to encrypt your wallet(s). If you don’t have a list, try guessing some common ones (e.g., “password123”, “letmein”, etc.) and save them in a text file for later use.
4. Your private keys or mnemonic phrases if available.
5. A cup of coffee to keep you awake during the recovery process.
Now that we have everything ready, Let’s get cracking with some examples!
Example #1: Password Recovery (Bitcoin)
Let’s say you lost your Bitcoin wallet and forgot the password. Don’t worry, BTCRecover can help you recover it using a dictionary attack. Here are the steps to follow:
1. Open up your terminal or command prompt and navigate to the directory where you downloaded BTCRecover (e.g., ~/btcrecover).
2. Run `python btcrecover.py –wallet-type bitcoin –addrs
3. Wait for BTCRecover to do its magic! Depending on the size of your password list, this can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.
4. Once it’s done, you should see some output similar to this:
# Set the path to your password list file
password_file = "~/btcrecover/passwords.txt"
# Wait for BTCRecover to run and extract private keys
# Note: Depending on password list size, this can take a few minutes to several hours
# Note: BTCRecover will output the private key(s) for the specified address(es)
# Note: Replace <your_address> with the actual address(es) you want to recover
[*] Found wallet at index 102 with password 'letmein'
[*] Extracted private key(s) for address(es): <your_address>
5. If BTCRecover found your wallet, you can use the extracted private keys to sweep them into a new wallet using any Bitcoin client or service that supports importing private keys (e.g., Electrum).
Example #2: Private Key Repair (Bitcoin)
Let’s say you have a damaged private key and need to repair it using BTCRecover. Here are the steps to follow:
1. Open up your terminal or command prompt and navigate to the directory where you downloaded BTCRecover (e.g., ~/btcrecover).
2. Run `python btcrecover.py –rawprivatekey
3. Wait for BTCRecover to do its magic! Depending on the size of your guess list, this can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.
4. Once it’s done, you should see some output similar to this:
# This script is used to recover a damaged private key for a Bitcoin wallet using BTCRecover.
# It requires a file containing possible private keys and can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours to complete.
# Specify the path to the file containing possible private keys.
# Note: The "~" symbol represents the user's home directory.
path = "~/btcrecover/privkeys.txt"
# Wait for BTCRecover to run and recover the damaged private key.
# Note: The time it takes to complete depends on the size of the guess list.
# It can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours.
BTCRecover.run(path)
# Once BTCRecover is done, the output will display the recovered private key and password.
# Note: The private key and password will be displayed in place of 'your_damaged_private_key_here' and 'letmein' respectively.
print("[*] Found wallet at index 10 with private key 'your_damaged_private_key_here' and password 'letmein'")
# The extracted private key(s) will be displayed for the corresponding address(es).
# Note: The <your_address> placeholder will be replaced with the actual address(es).
print("[*] Extracted private key(s) for address(es): <your_address>")
5. If BTCRecover found your wallet, you can use the extracted private keys to sweep them into a new wallet using any Bitcoin client or service that supports importing private keys (e.g., Electrum).
Example #3: Address Lookup (Ethereum)
Let’s say you have an Ethereum address and want to find out which wallet it belongs to. Here are the steps to follow:
1. Open up your terminal or command prompt and navigate to the directory where you downloaded BTCRecover (e.g., ~/btcrecover).
2. Run `python btcrecover.py –wallet-type ethereum –addrs
3. Wait for BTCRecover to do its magic! Depending on the size of the wallet database, this can take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes.
4. Once it’s done, you should see some output similar to this:
# This script is used to extract private keys from a wallet database using BTCRecover.
# It requires an Ethereum address to be provided as an argument.
# Import the necessary library for interacting with Ethereum addresses.
import ethereum
# Set the argument provided as the Ethereum address to be used.
address = <your_address>
# Use the ethereum library to interact with the provided address.
ethereum --addrs address
# Wait for BTCRecover to extract the private keys from the wallet database.
# The time taken for this process can vary depending on the size of the database.
# It can take anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes.
BTCRecover.extract_private_keys()
# Once the extraction is complete, the script will output the private keys for the provided address.
# The private keys are necessary for accessing the wallet and its contents.
print("Private key(s) extracted for address: " + address)
5. If BTCRecover found your wallet, you can use the extracted private keys to sweep them into a new wallet using any Ethereum client or service that supports importing private keys (e.g., MyEtherWallet).