Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Technical Support
Re: Found Bitcoin and litecoin wallet files from 2012. Lost password. Help?
by
deescrid
on 12/12/2017, 02:17:22 UTC
In a nutshell, you're going to have a tough time.

If you dont know ANYTHING about the passwords then brute-forcing them could easily take years.  It might not finish during your lifetime.

If you know SOME information about the passwords, you can massively reduce the amount of possibilities that would need to be attempted.  The more info you have the better.  Of course, if you get any of this info wrong, then the correct password might not even be attempted, making the whole thing a massive waste of time.


Funnily enough, I am in a similar situation myself at the moment (though my wallet appears to be broken along with my password not working).  But I'm not so concerned about cracking the password currently because as far as I can tell, my wallet is for empty for whatever stupid reason (there is a seperate thread on this), so it would be a waste of my time.

I honestly think the best thing you can do is really have a good sit down and start typing down in notepad password possibilities.  Are you the type of person to replace e's with 3's?  Are you the type of person that uses the same password over and over, but just changes it slightly?

Try to recreate your surroundings at the time when you would have created the password.  Down to re-arranging the room, perhaps even re-creating the day that you did it (if you do remember anything at all about it).  Memories work in funny ways, and sometimes just re-living an experience of that day can spark the retrieval of a memory of what you did.

I wish you all the luck in the world.