Re: Bitcoin Cipher/puzzle - 0.56 Prize ! Bitcoins

Another hint for combatants who are struggling like me: most of the chars in #10 are sitting in the checksum part of the B58 private key.

I'm looking at https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet_import_format and don't see you can take advantage of that fact.
Don't you have to decode the base58 first before you can remove the 4 byte checksum?

Better reference: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=304645.msg3270248#msg3270248

This site here: https://gobittest.appspot.com/PrivateKey is actually quite useful for doing this. It also does everything step by step so you can understand the process.

It's just an interactive version, but it still doesn't explain how you can ignore the checksum without first decoding the entire base58 string. On a few tests with random keys, using the technique shown in the 2nd link I posted, the checksum characters on average affect the last 6 characters of the wif, but I did find a key that affected the last 9 characters.

You can't ignore the checksum without first decoding it. By converting it to base58 from base256 the last digits will be different and with each key it varies so it is not possible to know the checksum without decoding the base58