Topic: SOLVED: deprecated wallet: mSIGNA - how to access private keys? TINY BTC BOUNTY! (Read 318 times)

I have a cache of various Bitcoin wallets/clients for testing purposes and I happened to have mSigna among those.

For the tip address, you can use any of the two addresses in my profile page: https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/nc50lc-1237156

Amazing you finally got it working. Big props to nc50lc for the ingenious solution!

The error messages just mean the signature was incorrect for whatever reason (most likely it was signed with the wrong private key). I'm also curious about the derivation path and am half tempted to download the wallet myself to figure it out, but at the same time I don't want a wallet with such a crazy system as a 1-of-1 multi-sig and unknown back up processes on my computer.

This is a great lesson for everyone - stick to the industry standards. When you try and do weird things in terms of addresses, scripts, seed phrases, back ups, etc., then more often than not you just create more problems than you are trying to solve.

Ah, yes, I just found it, you need to click "view transactions" und the History tab. I think Coins tab actually works best because you can be sure not to miss any spendable outputs this way.
nc50lc, make sure to send me your reward-BTC address, I am slightly upping the total bounty to 2x 1/10000 of a block-reward (0.00125 BTC in total).

Just curious: Did you also use mSIGNA in the past or did you just download it to check how things could work?

Glad that it worked at the end.
I didn't tested it on a locked keychain so I failed to add a note to unlock it first.

By the way, to get the transaction details like in the instructions, you should be in the 'History' tab as mentioned.
But yes, the hidden 'Coins' tab which are the actual UTXOs should work as well.

Fantastic! Thanks a lot for all the help to everyone involved.
I'd like to split my bounty with o_e_l_e_o and to nc50lc. - please send me your coffee-tip addresses via dm!
And also a big shoutout to NotATether and DaveF for offering help and suggestions!

It's just a relatively tiny amount of funds recovered HOWEVER I learned quite a bit on the way to finally solving how to retrieve them.
I am still curious as to what the correct derivation path for mSIGNA actually is and what some of the strange error messages when trying to broadcast with coinb.in actually mean.


If anyone faces the same problem or similar problem, I would be willing to make a step-by-step guide with screenshots to help assist.
For now all the info needed can be found in the thread and already neatly summarized by nc50lc a few posts back.

That worked - it detects the right amount of sats etc on it. I created a tx with a typical fee.
However just importing the tx to mSIGNA gives the following error: "invalid signature".
The coinbin tool also allows for signing. So I tried it signing with the BIP32 extended private key. Does work - But broadcasting does not. I tried it in Electrum and on coinb.in itself. The error I get is similar "1 the transaction was rejected by network rules. mandatory-script-verify-flag-failed (Operation not valid with the current stack size)".
I also tried signing with the public BIP32 key and importing to mSIGNA (to hopefully sign there and export later), but it gets denied with the "invalid signature" prompt


I already failed at step 5 "open a transaction via "Right-Click->Details" -> I can only click on details in the addresses tab, where I clearly see the ones with still spendable-outputs available. However nowhere I can find a "Share-> Copy to Clipboard" option.
I found something similar though in the Coins tab. If I click on Details there is an "Export -> Copy to Clipboard" option. I tried that and then import via mSIGNA via Transactions->Import Transaction->From Clipboard (raw). It crashed the wallet. lol (no worries I backed it up before).


EDIT: BIG UPDATE! It worked! I hadn't unlocked my keychain when I first tried to import and mSIGNA crashed. However I just tried again and it actually worked. Importing to mSIGNA, then, with finally a correct sync state I was able to select the right spendable outputs (actually just the address holding the coins) and then sign the transaction, import to electrum and broadcast there.




Yes, mSIGNA has a network setting page similar to Electrum where you just input an IP address and a port. The keys are only on my device - it's actually it once was a pretty cool wallet with lots of options for individual control. Just setup in a weird and depricated way without proper documentation to be found and ofc not updated for over 5 or 6 years now.



I feel there are many paths that almost lead to the right desitnation, but something is missing. Probably has to do with their strange multisig-1-1

Does your wallet simply include a setting for the node IP address and port to sync with, or does it store the wallet there too?

If the latter, I am thinking on the lines of running the mSIGNA wallet on my box and issuing RPCs to my node to try to fetch private keys or something like that - so not really decentralized but I guess if you have no other way to access the bitcoins inside the wallet then you probably don't have another alternative than to run a Bitcoin full node.

Ahh right, sure.

You'll want to go back to the mempool.space page for the transaction you sent me, click on "Details" again, and copy and paste the text after where it says "OP_PUSHBYTES_37" for each address. There's one of those for each address. Each one will start with "5121" and will end with "51ae".

If you paste that string in to coinb.in and hit load, it will find the address.

Thanks again, o_e_l_e_o.
I checked your link but I get a " You should use the redeem script, not its address!" message - but didn't really check how this works, maybe I should readthe documentation first, will do so tomorrow.


Very detailed explanation, much appreciated. This will be my next try, if I can't figure out how to do it via the coinb.in tool.
Thanks, nc50lc.


And thank you, Dave! Yes, the full node solution is cool, but hopefully not necessary and at this point not even sure I wanna do it for the funds remaining.
Might get back to you, at some point if really none of the above works out.

If NotATethers node does not work out and you can wait till late next week I can have a disposable machine setup for you with a full node that is synced on it. Linux / Windows just let me know.

You can then install what you need, do what you need to do and I'll wipe it.

Should not matter really since there should be no funds left. I'm just so busy at the moment getting a machine up and a 1tb drive installed and core synced is going to take me a little while to get it done. Or, I can just spin up a node with storage and let you do the rest.

-Dave

There a way to do it in Electrum even if your mSigna isn't synced, but you must have a list of your addresses.

Here's how to do it:

• Create an Electrum wallet with the option "Import bitcoin address or private keys" and paste ALL of your addresses with transaction history, including the empty ones (if unsure, just paste all).
• Alternatively, if you're 100% sure of the funded ones, paste those instead.
• Finish creating the wallet and let Electrum Sync.
• Go to 'History' tab and you should see a list of transactions.
• Now, each transaction should be imported to mSigna manually, from old to new: to do that, open a transaction via "Right-Click->Details".
• In the transaction details, export it via "Share->Copy to Clipboard".
• In in your mSigna wallet, click "Transactions->Import Transaction->From Clipboard (raw)" and it will be added to your Transactions tab.
• Do that to the rest of the transactions in Electrum to manually sync your mSigna wallet.

After importing all of the transactions, just create a transaction manually, export it (raw) and import it to Electrum to broadcast.
Here's the detailed steps to Send the transaction:

• In mSigna, Go to 'Accounts' tab; click the correct account and then click "Send".
• In the 'Send' window, Tap "Enable Coin Control" for easier manual txn generation.
• Select all of the available inputs and the total should be listed below.
• Set an absolute fee (it's not fee rate) which should be not less than the standard fee for the transaction's size.
• Now fill up the address and amount which should be equal to the fee deducted from the inputs' amount.
• Click "Sign" to finalize it (or "Save Unsigned->Right click on the created unsigned txn in the history->Signatures...->Right-Click->Add Signature").
• Now to Broadcast that Signed Raw transaction, right-click on it and select "Export Transaction->To Clipboard (raw)"
• Import it to Electrum via "Tools->Load transaction->From text", then click broadcast.

I am forgetting that mSIGMA has not been updated since 2017, and that Electrum exports transactions in PSBT format, which was only released in 2017 in BIP174. I wonder if this is the issue.

Why not try importing your addresses and creating the transaction using https://www.coinb.in/#newTransaction instead. This will export your transaction as plain hex, which is hopefully the format mSIGMA uses too, and then try importing that to mSIGMA for signing?

If that fails, then I think the easiest thing is going to be to try to sync your mSIGMA wallet with NotATether's node as he kindly offered above.

Unfortunatelly not. I tried first with the 3 inputs I have and then just a solo input. Both didn't work.
I noticed there might be trouble stemming from using a bech32 address as the receiver address and tried with a 1xxx legacy one instead, same results - mSIGNA shows an error upon import.

This sounds like your transaction is too large for mSIGMA to handle for some reason. Are you trying to consolidate a lot of inputs at once? Perhaps split your transaction in to two and try again with fewer inputs?

I feel like that was VERY close. Did all the steps on the electrum side - works well.
When trying to import the transaction with mSIGNA I get the following error and immediately aborting "invalid signature" - if I just select "import transactions".
When trying to import using "import transaction (raw)" I get "Push operation exceeds data size".

Ahh well then, that changes everything! This should (hopefully) be the easiest option going forward then. What I would do is the following:

• Get a list of all the addresses which still have funds on them
• Create a new Electrum wallet, select "Import bitcoin addresses or private keys", and insert all your addresses
• In that Electrum wallet, create a transaction sending all those coins to a regular address you control
• At the bottom left of the transaction window, select "Export" (you might have to select "Finalize" first), and export to clipboard
• Import it from the clipboard in to mSIGMA and (hopefully!) sign it
• Export it from mSIGMA, import it back in to Electrum, and broadcast it

UTXO selection is not available - just individual addresses from within the wallet itself.

Yes, importing is available via the following options: from clipboard or from file, optionally in RAW.
Btw sorry, you asked before if tx export was possible, for some reason I missed that option before.


That sounds interesting, thanks for the offer.
Not sure if it's worth it for the few sats remaining, how would that actually work - Just try to connect to it via the right address?

Would you like to borrow my full node for a little while?

Does the coin control feature allow you to pick individual UTXOs, or just addresses? So if you had received bitcoin three times to the same address, can you pick exactly which output to spend?

Second question - if you can export transactions, can you import them too?

e_o_l_e_o has indeed helped a lot so far. Getting close to sloving it, but seems the derivation path of mSIGNA isn't easy to find out.
If anyone has any insight on the correct derivation path for mSIGNA or is tech-savy enough to find it in the code on github, please let us know!
https://github.com/ciphrex/mSIGNA

However, big update! I was able to retrieve around half of the funds.
- mSIGNA allows to export transactions as raw data.
- mSIGNA allows coin control.
- So I just selected the public address I knew still hand coins on it, found an oldschool 1xxxx address in an older electrum wallet to send the funds to and created the signed transaction with mSIGNA and then exported it.
- imported the transaction in electrum wallet via tools -> import transaction -> from text -> broadcast.
- BAMMM it worked!

However, because my mSIGNA wallet is not fully synced I could only retrieve the funds up to the amount the current balance of this unsynced wallet showed. Which is only around half of the total funds. Still a nice recovery.
There are two more addresses with around 0.0015 BTC each that I cannot access this way because their balance in the wallet is too high. - If I want to create a tx inside the wallet it works and I can export it (even using the amount I know is on it because I can check via a current explorer).
HOWEVER after importing to electrum (which also works) the transaction will be denied by the node, because the transactions includes an amount that exceeds the actual accessible funds. Why? Because the transactions also includes a change address that will receive the "remaining" funds - because mSIGNA is synced at a state that has too many funds than actually available on that address.

Still, a nice tiny success. If anyone has more ideas on this, feel free to jump into the discussion.

Kryptowerk has provided me with a TXID, which I will obviously not share here for his privacy. However, I will explain what we have figured out so far to see if anyone else can chime in.

The P2SH address is indeed set up very oddly as a 1-of-1 multi-sig. It is as follows:


I have advised Kryptowerk how to extract the public keys from the redeem script for each address which has previously been used. They are all compressed public keys. With this list of public keys, and I then suggested he use https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ offline to enter his seed phrase, select BIP32, and then experiment with various derivation paths to see if he could find any matching public keys. However, no luck so far.

So yeah, it's not a simple nested segwit address at all. Would you be willing to PM the transaction ID so I can look at the script and see what it does exactly? The next step would be to extract the public key hash from the script and see if we can generate the matching private key from your seed phrase.

Okay, wow how do you know this stuff?
Ermm... yes so, there are several interesting things here:
ScriptSig says "OP_0
OP_PUSHBYTES_72" then followed by defintely more than 40 chars (looks like around 100)
and then it says OP_PUSHBYTES_37 followed by maybe 50 characters

Also it says multisig 1/1 - which isn't normal, right? Does a 1/1 multisig even make sense?
Seems like you were right and every mSIGNA wallet is indeed multisig - even when it actually isn't really. 

It wouldn't tell you anything about the derivation path, but it would tell you if you are indeed looking for a standard nested segwit address. If you are, then we can tackle finding out the derivation path. If the script is something different, then checking derivation paths as you are doing with Electrum or similar will get you nowhere.

Find one of your addresses from the mSIGMA wallet which has sent coins out from it, and grab the TXID. Head over to https://mempool.space/ and look up that transaction. Click on where it says "Details" on the right hand side. Underneath your address the first field should be titled "ScriptSig (ASM)". Hopefully next to that it says "OP_PUSHBYTES_22", followed by "0014" and then 40 random characters. If it does, then you've got a nested segwit address. If not, then you've got something different.

I see. Yes, good point! I am 99.9% certain it's not a multi-sig. First of I would have remembered and written down some info about it on my seed-paper.
But most importantly, I tried re-importing via the wordlist into mSIGNA and it worked flawlessly - they display a hash for each "keychain" (actually the HD wallet) and it is the same for the imported wallet via SEED compared to my original wallet.

No such option available like importing or exporting tx with mSIGNA.

I did check their source code a little bit. Not sure where to look for it and even if I find something how to proceed from there. - Just getting the right derivation path info would probably solve it, right?
About the own node solution: Right now don't even have the disc space for a BTC full node (but could use some older HDD lying around) - my worry is, even after finally having a synced full node running and connected to mSIGNA, the sync process will be stuck somewhere - that's what people seem to report on their github a lot.


That sounds interesting. Would it tell anything about the derivation path or other wallet properties? How does the script used to send help in my case?
Can you guide me through the steps without me exposing my pub keys?

In the end it's around 300 bucks that are unaccessible right now. Would be nice to have, but don't want to spend weeks trying to recover them.
I'm giving away 0.001 BTC for whoever helps the most to recover these funds. Will add info in OP. I reserve the right to decide at my own discretion who will get the funds - if more people are involved in finding a solution I might split it up.

Thanks already for your helpful inpot @o_e_l_e_o .
btw, I edited OP to include link to mSIGNA source code.

Yeah, I get that. My point of importing the seed phrase again was to ensure your wallet is indeed just a single signature wallet derived from that seed phrase and not some more complex multi-sig set up which we would never be able to recover using just one seed phrase.

Having read through the .pdf again, I'm not so sure:


There is no mention that they use nested segwit addresses, which is the type of address every other wallet will try to recover when given a seed phrase and a P2SH address type. The sentence above I've just quoted suggests they may use some strange custom 1-of-1 script, in which case you will never find it by just playing with the derivation path. You will need to find the exact script being used.

Does mSIGMA have the option to import transactions from elsewhere? That would be the easiest way forward - create an unsigned transaction elsewhere, import it to mSIGMA for signing, and then export it for broadcast. If not, then I think the easiest option is going to be to spin up your own node and get mSIGMA to connect to it. Otherwise you will need to comb through the entire source code to figure out exactly the script type and derivation path which is being used.

Alternatively - have you spend from any of these addresses in the past? If so, we can view the script for them on the blockchain.

I may not have made that clear in OP: But I can still access my wallet in mSIGNA. That's not the issue. This is where I got all the public keys and see a few of change funds still on there.
The issue is using the exportable keys as described in OP via 1), 2) or 3) to import properly via an other wallet.

Also, my wallet is NOT setup as a multisig, just a regular HD wallet. Multisig apparantly was optional.
My guess it's only about finding the right derivation path. Wonder if there is any tool to determine which is used by mSIGNA here.
Thanks for digging up that old pdf - no info on their derivation path used, though.

Seems the derivation path issue was already around in 2017: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.21524209

Probable solutions to my problem
- get mSIGMA to connect to a node (I don't have a full node)
- find the proper derivation path used by the wallet & import to another wallet

The .pdf I linked to above says it should connect to your own node. Are you running a node?

Can you import your seed phrase back in to mSIGNA and regenerate the same wallet with the same addresses? If so, then it is hopefully just a case of finding the right derivation path. But I worry given what is written on that .pdf it is going to be significantly more complicated since it apparently uses an unknown multi-sig arrangement.

Seems like the same or similar tool like the one I linked to in my post.
The problem is, I can play with some of the settings but the "Derived Addresses" list on the bottom of the page doesn't come up with a match to one of the public addresses I can see in the mSIGNA wallet.
My guess is BIP49 (or maybe BIP141) would be the right option, as they are the only ones producing addresses starting with 3. But playing a little with the derivation pathes (I tried 1-5/1-5) doesn't bring up a match.

Something to note: The BIP32 Extended Key does never match the one from mSIGNA no matter which of the BIP options I choose, also altering some of the derivation pathes.


I still do have the mSIGNA wallet. It doesn't offer any option to export single private keys. The only private key export option is said BIP32 extended private key.
The problem with the software is, I wasn't able to get it to connect to a node so far.
I used this list here: https://bitnodes.io/nodes/#network-snapshot and tried some of the addresses. Any better suggestions?

Thanks!

I've found an archived version of their old website here: https://web.archive.org/web/20150316215945/https://ciphrex.com/

It says there, however, that it was a multi-sig wallet.

I've also found their old GitHub here: https://github.com/ciphrex/mSIGNA

Looking through the issues on that GitHub, people are talking about .vault files. Do you have one of these?

You could potentially try to download their software and see if you can import what you have back in to mSIGMA, and then from there extract the raw private keys? I'd be careful downloading and running such long outdated and completely unreviewed code, however. You could also try making a copy of the .priv file and then simply opening it with a text editor and see if there are any private keys inside?

Edit: Also found an archived copy of their "Getting Started" pdf here: https://web.archive.org/web/20190410173347/https://ciphrex.com/docs/mSIGNA-Getting_Started.pdf

Try https://iancoleman.io/bip39/ instead. Play with it until you find the right derivation path.

Segwit did not exist 7 years ago.

--Knight Hider

This is a question for the sligthly more tech-savy Bitcoiners out here.

I recently accessed an old wallet called mSIGNA. It was recommended about 7 years ago and I used it for a while.
Now I want to access the remaining funds. This would only work if either I can connect to a node with this outddated wallet - Couldn't get it to work so far.
Or by exporting and re-importing the keys to another wallet.

The good news: I can access the public key list that was in use. And found an amount of slightly above 0.01 BTC that I want to transfer.
I still have the password.

The wallet allows to export the following (private) information:
1. Seed word list. It's a 24 word list.
2. BIP32 extended key
3. Private key file (file ending in .priv) -> no idea what that is and if it can be imported in other wallets

Now, I have tried to import 1) and 2) via electrum wallet.
Here are the options I tried without success so far (wallet not showing any transactions in the tx history). Note, I am connected to a node and other wallets update correctly, so it's not a connection problem.
- KEYRESTORE
  a) I already have a seed - here the import is only possible by switching to BIP39 seed
     I tried all 3 available address formats (legacy, p2sh-segwit and native segwit) without success. Also Detect Existing Accounts doesn't find anything. I left the suggested derivation path unchanged - maybe with the right path settings this could be solved?
  b) Use a master key - If I choose this option, Electrum accepts the BIP32 extended key exported from mSIGNA. However again, there are no transactions recognized.
- IMPORT BITCOIN ADDRESSES OR PRIVATE KEY - you can only import regular private keys, and I cannot export/access there from the mSIGNA wallet. - I played a little with this tool: https://bip32.tools/?lang=en But couldn't get it to create a list of private keys for me.

If anyone can either help me to import my mSIGNA keys into another wallet so I can access any remaining funds or get mSIGNA to work again (meaning make it connect to a node so I can just send my funds) it would be much appreciated.
Thanks in advance!

Made this self-moderated to avoid spam and farm comments. Anything off-topic or doing nothing else than suggesting something already explained in my post will be deleted.


Possibly helpful resources (edited)
- mSIGNA github: https://github.com/ciphrex/mSIGNA
- archive of old website: https://web.archive.org/web/20150316215945/https://ciphrex.com/



final edit: a solution
The "easiest" way to access my unspent outputs / a solution was provided here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.62604661
Case solved / funds returned.

However we still don't know the correct derivation path of mSIGNA and how to import the seed phrase or master private key into another wallet in way that lets you access your funds. (bonus quest for anyone interested, no bounty for solving it, though)