Need Assistance - Ethereum Password Not Working

dbfrav commented 8 years ago

Greetings -

Forgive me if I've posted in the wrong place. I am a new user of Ethereum and decided to download the EtherBase wallet from Github. After the download I extracted the files and then opened the Ethereum wallet file and it immediately began syncing with the blockchain right out of the box. Once completed it was ready to go and while syncing it did prompt me for a password and I was very careful in typing it twice and recording it to my password book. So once the blockchain synced I loaded some ether into wallet and it credited fine.

Then, the next day I downloaded Geth and Eth-miner and created 2 additional accounts to the main wallet via CMD window prompt and those accounts prompted me to create a password each which I did and recorded those passwords. Next day I wanted to send some ether from the main EtherBase account and I was prompted for the password which I entered. I got error message "wrong password". So I then tried the passwords for each new account that I created in CMD prompt mode but neither worked.

I am very good with passwords. I've never lost a password in my life or even confused them with others. I copy them down immediately when I comprise them so this is not an issue of a "lost password" or a mistyped password as there is a preventative for this in requiring you to retype password when creating the wallet. I am absolutely certain that the password is correct but the EthereumBase main wallet will not recognize it. I'm thinking that adding the two new accounts to the wallet via Geth CMD prompt may have caused this somehow?

I searched and found others who have had the same issue and people reply saying this could be a bug in the system.

As mentioned, in searches I came across several others who have similar issues but I see no remedy and the threads are now old and inactive. Here is a link to someone else having the same issue #161 but no remedy seemed to have taken place and thread was closed so I am hoping someone can help me out. I'd be eternally grateful for any and all assistance.

Best regards,

dbf ~

ethtester commented 7 years ago

@dbfrav CONGRATULATIONS! this is awesome news!!!!! Now you said your password had 7 ADDITIONAL characters prefixed ahead of your password you knew was the correct one? Do you mind telling me the total count of characters in the password and if it included special characters / numbers? Also was this additional 7 character word given to Dave when you initially contacted him? I'm trying to determine if Dave has greatly improved his brute force capability or just reworked what you gave him as possible suggestions..... Thanks and ENJOY your ETH!! I'm so happy for you, we have virtually the same amount of ETH. I hope I can access it again...

supere989 commented 7 years ago

THATS AWESOME! Congradulations!

Thank You!

Raymond Johnson 509-521-8751 supere989@gmail.com

On Mon, Aug 28, 2017 at 12:13 AM, dbfrav notifications@github.com wrote:

UPDATE: My wallet has been unlocked! As mentioned way up on the post, I initially hired Wallet Recovery Service over a year ago to brute force the wallet. I gave him what I was certain was my password and he worked on it for weeks and told me that he had run tens of millions of combinations with no luck. So he tended to agree that there was a bug in the wallet software. So month after month I kept checking this post. As time went by the more hope I was losing of ever unlocking my wallet.

Last week I contacted FireAndTheVoid for advice as I saw that he helped others with their wallet password issues and we had our initial conference on Friday. I regained hope. Then, this morning I got an email from Dave at Wallet Recovery Service telling me that he had finally succeeded in unlocking my wallet. I had not heard from him in over a year but Dave finally cracked it, saying he obtained newer and more updated password brute-force software and he went back and worked again on some of the wallets he was unsuccessful with over the past year.

It turns out that my password was indeed what I had remembered it to be, but apparently I had added 7 letters as a prefix to the password that I absolutely do not recall adding. The letters were meaningful and spelled out relation to me so I am convinced that I added them for extra security but never wrote them down with the password which is so unlike me.

FireAndTheVoid is a wonderful fellow who spent some time with me and I thank him for his time as well as all of you for your advice and help to all of us over the past year +. I wish you all eventual success and would absolutely recommend touching base with FireAndTheVoid as he's very knowledgeable and a gentleman. I'd also recommend Dave at Wallet Recovery Service. He doesn't give up and his tenacity eventually paid off for me.

God Bless you all,

dbf _

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Freakingcat commented 7 years ago

@dbfrav Congratulations! As I have also hundreds of ETH locked @FireAndTheVoid is working on a daily basis together to solve my password issue. I also had given Dave twice a try and he was so friendly to run his brute force army, but unfortunately it didnt gain any access. I highly recommend @FireAndTheVoid who is determined not to give up on cracking my password and has written some quite good tools to bruteforce password lists which I made. The lucky day will come. So far tested 3.3 million passwords

dbfrav commented 7 years ago

@ethtester - There were no special characters on the prefix characters of the password and I did not give Dave anything but the 8 numerical digits that I was 100% certain was my password. As I mentioned initially in this post, I have only used several passwords throughout the years (I know, very bad idea) and I have them written down and saved as a text file. The one I used when I created the EtherBase Wallet was my wedding anniversary date in this format: 01234567. Now here's the thing, I hired Dave at Wallet Recovery Services before I created this post. I gave him this password plus, just in case, I gave him all of my passwords. There's no way I would have used anything else but these passwords.

He worked on it for weeks and he finally contacted me saying that after many millions of different combinations, he had no luck so he was pretty convinced that it was a bug in Mist. I never heard from him again until this past Sunday, well over a year later when I woke up, checked my email and was surprised to see a message from Dave. "Good News!" he said. "I finally cracked your password. The password is (actual numerical digits substituted) "married01234567". ...I'm like "WHAT?? I don't recall adding "married" as a prefix". Believe me, I have a very good memory, especially when prompted. This is not something I would have done. But it is what it is. I have to believe I did this because it was, after all, my wedding date. That really got me to thinking of just how fallible our memories can be.

So ironically, FireAndTheVoid and I had just started working together two nights before. We set up some software programs and downloaded Wire.com for secure messaging and then decided to pickup again on Sunday. It was Sunday morning that I got the email from Dave. Talk about coincidence?? Well over a year later Dave comes through.

I asked him if he had been working on it all throughout the past year and he replied:

"My software is continually evolving and improving, and I sometimes go back and work again on jobs that I feel should be solvable... as yours turned out to be".

So apparently Dave is always updating his equipment and as this case demonstrates, he doesn't give up.

As I said, no way do I recall coming up with that prefix of "married". Why would I do that when I already knew that was my wedding date? Here's what FireAndTheVoid mentioned to me.

"When you're given this warning: Make it as strong as if it would protect your house keys! We believe the warning to make the password strong scares people into using passwords that they are uncomfortable and unfamiliar with. Then, when the usual passwords don't work, they are surprised they can't get into their account."

After hearing this I thought "Ah yes, I had planned on using my regular password of my wedding date. But after seeing the stiff warning of "Make it as strong as if it would protect your house keys", I can see how I obviously felt the need to strengthen the password, in my case adding the prefix "married" just to make it a little more secure. Problem is, I never wrote that prefix down. I probably thought I'd remember "married" since it was my wedding date. But believe me, I never ever would have believed I wrote that.

So everyone, please consider FireAndTheVoid's suspicion that maybe more of us did this same thing. Hopefully FATV will chime in and explain this more thoroughly. I can't say enough about FATV and of course Dave at Wallet Recovery. I'll be standing by indefinitely for moral support and you all have my prayers in that you'll all get your wallets unlocked.

God Bless,

dbf -

ghost commented 7 years ago

Hi guys, I have an offer for anyone who has a password issue on ETH wallet. I had a password issue also (see my nick here in this thread on 3rd July) , so I hired a programmer and we spent days and weeks by tuning up the cracker. Now I have my ETH wallet password back :-) If you need help , I can provide you a finisched functional cracker with added optional functions for a fee to get some invested money back. At first we must consult technical details. So there is an option you dont need to provide me a wallet file at all and I will provide you a finished cracker of course with manual and help. There is no final success reward for me. Otherwise I can provide a different service to crack your password for 15% fee if Im successful. But in the second scenario U have to send me a file. So there are 2 options, to buy a tuned cracker or let me try cracking. For better trust, we can communicate on FB e.g. nevermind. I`m just a happy guy , who has a UTC file password back, but wants to get his invested money for cracking back. Write me on laterian@seznam.cz or to my acc here.

frozeman commented 7 years ago

I do understand your frustrations. Here are a few things you can consider when trying to unlock the account:

Have you had geth installed before Mist (in which case it would have created an ether base at its first start, use the password you used there)
Please also try unlocking via the command line: https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/wiki/Managing-your-accounts
Or the console: $ geth attach (after running a node in an other terminal) -> personal.unlockAccount('0xmyaddress', 'mypassword')
Maybe you used another tool to install geth, back in the day, and this one created an account for you?
The accounts/keys can be found in Mac: ~/Library/Ethereum/keystore Win: %APPDATA%\Ethereum\keystore Linux: ~/.ethereum/keystore

Thats all the help i can give you. This software and the crypto space itself, states clearly that you are responsible for your keys and you need to know how to manage them properly. Please ALWAYS send small amounts first and try sending out a bit again, before making large money movements!!

This space is ALPHA, and many of the user facing tools, to make all of that convenient and safe need to be build first. We at Mist work on improving the account management - but this is the work off many groups together rather than us only, to ensure the best security we can give.

Many of the issues, don't arise from the software, but the faulty usage over the last two years. Many of the accounts people generated were created a long time ago and with older versions of geth. Maybe you can also try using an old version to unlock the account (again: use the command line here, like stated above)

From my experience in helping people restore their funds, 99% of the case it was a wrong password.

I wish you all the luck, and please try all the above to see if you can finally unlock your funds. Sadly there is not much we can do, as we have no control over your keys, or passwords.

ldrapeau commented 7 years ago

@frozeman: Great post - I agree, may be one other recommendation, for important accounts, I think it's preferable to stick to [A-Z] [0-9] [a-z] characters only (if the software you are using allows it), this will prevent a lot of cases that ended up in here where special characters where used and caused problems. Not to say that special characters would not, work, just a conservative tip to put all chances on your side of not having any issues. Good luck to all, and remember that life is more important than ETH!

abonn commented 7 years ago

Hi, thought I would join the conversation here as I have the same issue with regards to the Mist wallet. I have an Etherbase account created in March and quite frankly I do not remember ever setting up a password for it. However, I have a number of passwords that I have written down for crypto related things and absolutely none of these work. This is strange, as like others here I am meticulous about writing down my passwords somewhere.

I have tried using the Geth terminal and have probably tried 50 different passwords thus far. I tried using the python tool which checks all the permutations of possible passwords but am having trouble using it. I fortunately am not missing much on this account (only about 2500 DNT) but it's still worth over $150. I don't know if it is worth sending my info to one of the password crackers as even if they took a 50% fee it wouldn't be much for them.

I do know that I will only be using myetherwallet from now on.

m-thomson commented 6 years ago

Here's a tip in case it helps someone -

I couldn't figure out why my passphrase wasn't working for a long, long time. I eventually downgraded to 0.8.10 and suddenly it worked and I was able to transfer the ETH to a different account.

I'm 100% certain that I was trying the same password in recent versions :-/

frozeman commented 6 years ago

Thanks for the info. I am not aware we changed anything from that version on in respect to the password input. We will take a look though.

ldrapeau commented 6 years ago

Hi,

I could provide such a tool, but of course you will have to input some sensitive information from the wallet file. If not I can program a small computer (raspberry -pi) and send it to you, that way you could run it without any connection to the internet so you would be sure that nothing leaks, but the cpu on this small machine is not too strong... Good luck, Louis

2017-07-03 10:32 GMT-04:00 larandi notifications@github.com:

Hi I appreciate your respond, Im just trying to something on my own, if Im not successful I`ll come back and ask for a support. A reward 5000USD paid

in ETH is a matter of course. The problem is I do not want to provide a keystore file file , so a GUI tool would be nice. I just try to run python, but I`m not a deep tech guy, so it takes some time to me. If you have any other proposal, please come to me.

Stepan.

---------- Původní e-mail ---------- Od: ldrapeau notifications@github.com Komu: ethereum/mist mist@noreply.github.com Datum: 3. 7. 2017 15:03:22 Předmět: Re: [ethereum/mist] Need Assistance - Ethereum Password Not Working (#982) " Hi,

To all who are having "problems" accessing your things. I can try to help but you have to cooperate, it's that simple, if you don't allow us to ask questions there is not much we can do. Also, it's better to get on a person to person to start, and once a solution is found (or not) you can come back to the forums and share. Good day to all.

Louis Drapeau Creations Informatiques LD Inc. 514-355-5666 <(514)%20355-5666> louis.fixme@gmail.com(mailto:louis.fixme@gmail.com)

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ghost commented 6 years ago

Hi I already created my own tool and found the password :-) thank you. ---------- Původní e-mail ---------- Od: ldrapeau notifications@github.com Komu: ethereum/mist mist@noreply.github.com Datum: 30. 11. 2017 14:52:39 Předmět: Re: [ethereum/mist] Need Assistance - Ethereum Password Not Working (#982) "Hi,

I could provide such a tool, but of course you will have to input some sensitive information from the wallet file. If not I can program a small computer (raspberry -pi) and send it to you, that way you could run it without any connection to the internet so you would be sure that nothing leaks, but the cpu on this small machine is not too strong... Good luck, Louis

2017-07-03 10:32 GMT-04:00 larandi notifications@github.com:

Hi I appreciate your respond, Im just trying to something on my own, if Im not successful I`ll come back and ask for a support. A reward 5000USD paid

in ETH is a matter of course. The problem is I do not want to provide a keystore file file , so a GUI tool would be nice. I just try to run python, but I`m not a deep tech guy, so it takes some time to me. If you have any other proposal, please come to me.

Stepan.

---------- Původní e-mail ---------- Od: ldrapeau notifications@github.com Komu: ethereum/mist mist@noreply.github.com Datum: 3. 7. 2017 15:03:22 Předmět: Re: [ethereum/mist] Need Assistance - Ethereum Password Not Working (#982) " Hi,

To all who are having "problems" accessing your things. I can try to help but you have to cooperate, it's that simple, if you don't allow us to ask questions there is not much we can do. Also, it's better to get on a person to person to start, and once a solution is found (or not) you can come back to the forums and share. Good day to all.

Louis Drapeau Creations Informatiques LD Inc. 514-355-5666 <(514)%20355-5666> louis.fixme@gmail.com(mailto:louis.fixme@gmail.com)

— You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub (https://github.com/ethereum/mist/issues/982#issuecomment-312639955), or mute the thread (https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AcdgGkFEnA673Rm5Ry- gmdroZezcVl0tks5sKOaUgaJpZM4JOSdk) .

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abonn commented 6 years ago

Hi, I downgraded to version 0.8 and then changed my password (it kept saying I had the wrong password in the most up-to-date version).

Thank you so much @m-thomson for this tip!

p0mmi3 commented 6 years ago

@abonn

Hi, did you use 0.8.10 to access your account as well?

ldrapeau commented 6 years ago

Hi, no I work with the geth CLI in linux.

abonn commented 6 years ago

Yes.

On Wed, Dec 20, 2017 at 12:42 AM, Pavneet Puri notifications@github.com wrote:

@abonn https://github.com/abonn

Hi, did you use 0.8.10 to access your account as well?

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davimac commented 6 years ago

Hi everyone, I have the same issue as described by a few people in this thread, I'm 100% certain of my password, but it's not accepted by Geth in cmd or by myetherwallet when I select the keystore. How do I change my version of Geth to 0.8.10 like people are suggesting?

Get Outlook for Androidhttps://aka.ms/ghei36

From: Ev notifications@github.com Sent: Tuesday, January 9, 2018 8:15:44 PM To: ethereum/mist Cc: davimac; Mention Subject: Re: [ethereum/mist] Need Assistance - Ethereum Password Not Working (#982)

Reopened #982https://github.com/ethereum/mist/issues/982.

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abonn commented 6 years ago

@davimac Check https://geth.ethereum.org/downloads/ and click to show older versions.

m-thomson commented 6 years ago

To clarify, I used https://github.com/ethereum/mist/releases/tag/v0.8.10 but that version may have worked for me because it was the version I used to create the wallet in the first place (I can't recall).

But downgrading to whatever version created your wallet is definitely worth a shot. If you can't remember which version it was, then I suggest starting with the above version. At least in my case there was a change introduced after that version that caused my password to no longer work.

Good luck.

ursul0 commented 6 years ago

Let me answer here to the "99% forgot their password" comments. 1) Please note that I had two wallets initialised and I had no access only to the coinbase (one of them) the other always worked 2) I have recovered my access to the coinbase wallet by rolling back the image of the entire machine with the node and using my EXISTING key backup and EXISTING password that I always thought was right.

ali8889 commented 6 years ago

Good

philsmd commented 6 years ago

@ursul0 it would be very interesting and maybe very helpful for others if you could analyze the two files (two different versions of the keystore/json file) and see what is different. I think also @holiman could be interested to get a copy of the 2 files (privately and only after there are no funds left on those addresses). Of course you do not need to send the file to the devs for analysis, but it could help others a lot in understanding the problem (again: only send anything after there is no ether left on the accounts and only if you previously confirmed that you are securely/encrypted communicating with the real @holiman ). Otherwise, never send any wallet files around!

ursul0 commented 6 years ago

@philsmd The JSON file was always the same, just as the password was always correct. What changed is the geth node setup (it was rolled back to the earlier snapshot, no mist wallet was installed at this point... I think) Also if I remember correctly the unlock still didn't work(the password was not accepted there) but account update did, allowing me to change the password and then all issues were gone

EDIT: probably worth mentioning that password problems appeared sometime after installing mist (was using console before just fine) ...and mist did worked for sometime properly too... Maybe it was mist version update?... The only thing I'm sure of now is that the password suddenly stopped working in mist

philsmd commented 6 years ago

so you are saying that the keystore file remained bit-by-bit identical and only the geth version changed (one older version of geth worked, while all newer versions of geth refused to work)? Well, it could be still interesting to analyze/see what was the root cause in your case, because in theory also new versions of mist/geth should be compatible with older keystore files. It could be some fixed bug like this: https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum/pull/2371 where newline characters were not stripped from the password etc... but I guess even then geth/mist should test both "versions" of the password even in newer versions. @holiman what do you think? could this case/file be interesting to investigate?

holiman commented 6 years ago

So, there is definitely interesting information, but it's so vague.

So for one thing, I checked out the difference between update versus unlock -- and I couldn't find anything that differs in any essential way (it's the same code paths).
Is it that something stopped working in Geth, or Mist? If the latter, perhaps it always worked in geth? If this is the case, it would be very interesting to know what versions worked/did not work.

So, @ursul0 could you try to write down (to the best of your recollection) the sequence of events that you experienced, if possible with dates (helpful in determining potential bugs/fixes) ? Also, if you do not want to divulge your password, it would (possibly) be useful to know if the password contained anything outside of [a-zA-Z0-9].

I don't think there's any point in analyzing the json files before we have a clearer understanding of the events.

If, however, it indeed was "mist did worked for sometime properly", then it would be VERY interesting to obtain the json file + password and simply go through old versions of Mist and test it.

ethereum / mist

Need Assistance - Ethereum Password Not Working #982