Bitcoin Challenge for the ELITE (treasure hunt ARMORY WALLET?)

pooya87

legendary

Activity: 3472

Merit: 10611

Quote from: poofykins on April 26, 2021, 03:00:09 AM

if the Sender could find the ADDY that he sent the BTC to...then using that address would it be possible to determine what platform the wallet was under

then that could help with what an ID might be for?

Yes, it could improve your chances to figure out what wallet your dad may have used based on the transaction history of the receiving address. For example if the coins were spent right away and the spending transaction had more inputs from other addresses there is a very good chance that the wallet was not Armory but a custodial wallet (like from exchanges). With some blockchain analysis (eg. https://www.walletexplorer.com/) you may have a way of knowing what service and then use the ID and (partial) passphrase, Email address, etc. to recover the coins if the service is still around and has kept their database from 10 years ago.

BTW both addresses you posted are 34 characters long and both are invalid due to having wrong checksum.

poofykins

newbie

Activity: 4

Merit: 0

if the Sender could find the ADDY that he sent the BTC to...then using that address would it be possible to determine what platform the wallet was under

then that could help with what an ID might be for?

pooya87

legendary

Activity: 3472

Merit: 10611

Quote from: poofykins on April 26, 2021, 02:46:09 AM

the chain is as I wrote it...that's what he had written actually the #'s are a little different but since it's 36 i've already come to the understanding that it cannot be a Wallet because those are 32 or 34 char long not 36

that's why i mentioned i'm not sure what that chain of characters actually is or refers to.

Armory is a Hierarchical Deterministic wallet which means it derives keys from an initial entropy which it lets user write down on paper. The string consists of either 2 lines or 4 lines using the characters I posted above (starting with a). For example it looks like this:

Code:

wtsa rras iuuj osuf eont ajjs jniu eohf taef
awrf nghs dnea fdwe kfua oewu ntei fnoo uhgi

As you can see each line encodes half of the master key (16 bytes) with a checksum with a total of 36 characters in base-16 (18 bytes per line).

Quote

i'm thinking I could gather a little more info from the person that paid the BTC but what exactly I should try to inquire i'm not sure of.

I can think of 2 things,
Start by talking to your dad to see if he can remember any more information and if he was actually using Armory to receive the payment. Having a user ID seems to be more like having an account with some web or custodial wallet (blockchain.info started in 2011).
Also ask the person who made the payment if they have kept any records. For example if they have their old wallet or address they could simply enter the address in a block explorer like I did above and see the history. That way they can tell you which address they sent the coins to and you can figure out if the coins are still there and how much was sent. It could also help with future recovery attempts.

poofykins

newbie

Activity: 4

Merit: 0

the chain is as I wrote it...that's what he had written actually the #'s are a little different but since it's 36 i've already come to the understanding that it cannot be a Wallet because those are 32 or 34 char long not 36

THIS IS THE EXACT CHAIN CORRECTED 1Mu8zJZ6Mm9jmPybW8LZikLggbsjv7i5Sr

that's why i mentioned i'm not sure what that chain of characters actually is or refers to.

i'm thinking I could gather a little more info from the person that paid the BTC but what exactly I should try to inquire i'm not sure of.

pooya87

legendary

Activity: 3472

Merit: 10611

Quote from: poofykins on April 26, 2021, 02:28:21 AM

then this string of 36 digits (that was written by him on a piece of paper with the word "ARMORY" , a username and the following digits....

Are these characters all among (asdfghjkwertuion) or among (0123456789abcdef)?
If it is the first one then it means you have half of the private key that Armory used to derive the child keys in the wallet file you have and the key to the address you posted is probably among them.
The problem is that brute forcing half of the private key is not possible because we are talking about 128 bits (ie. 2¹²⁸=3.4e+38).

Additionally depending on which Armory version that was used to create this wallet you may also be missing the chaincode used in child key derivation which is another 256-bit completely random entropy that you are missing which is not possible to even begin to brute force.

P.S. the address you posted was never used (is empty) so all this effort may be pointless.

Quote

(I can possibly track down the person who would have paid the BTC)

If they could tell you which address they sent the coins to, it could help with the recovery since it is a lot easier to brute force a key (assuming you can find more than 36 characters) by having the corresponding child address.

Quote

I have a USER ID:
Probably can guess the Password

If the wallet that was used to receive the coins was actually Armory then there is no user ID.

poofykins

newbie

Activity: 4

Merit: 0

My father might have been paid BTC 8-10 years ago
and had it in an ARMORY wallet

He left it to me...and said if you can figure this out it's yours (because he doesn't have the patience or desire)

this is the info I have:
(I can possibly track down the person who would have paid the BTC)

I have a USER ID:
Probably can guess the Password

then this string of 36 digits (that was written by him on a piece of paper with the word "ARMORY" , a username and the following digits....

"1Mu8zJZ6Mm9jmPybW8LZikLggbsjv7i5Sr" Edit corrected the chain...now it's correct!

Does anyone have any direction on what I could do from here to solve this or info on any part of this...like what the letter/numbers could be connected with.

Thank you in advance

Topic: Bitcoin Challenge for the ELITE (treasure hunt ARMORY WALLET?) (Read 120 times)