Recovering your lost Ethereum Mist wallet password
In this article, we explain how a non-technical user can recover his lost mist wallet password, given that he has a file backup and some recollection of the password he used.
A mist wallet user contacted us with an old, 2016 wallet backup file that he had, but could not remember the password to unlock it. We’ve then developed a quick NodeJS application as a prototype, that iterates over a given password list and attempts to decrypt the wallet with each of those passwords.
The recovery script expects two files as input
- The Mist wallet backup file — can be found in %appdata%\Roaming\Ethereum\keystore and has a format similar to
UTC — 2020–06–08T08–33–59.135699700Z — d728e1873ed53618c467ce06b6f20163eb39eaf5 - A password list to iterate over — each password in a new line. For example:
password
password123
mypassword
…
Once you’re done preparing the two files, you can clone the repository and run the script.
Mist wallet uses 262,144 PBKDF2 rounds by default, which means that each attempt takes around 3–5 seconds on a modern PC.
Need help?
We at Brute Brothers have special software and hardware to help recover lost passwords for Mist users. Contact us at sos@brutebrothers.com (PGP) for more details.
