Spending password and 12 word phrase not known

hi,
Created a Daedalus (Mac) wallet March 2018, cannot remember my spending password and cannot find a 12 word phrase that i wrote down. I understand that there is no way to retreive my ADA through a wallet. However is there any other way to retreive ADA from the wallet? Trace the keystrokes back to the wallet setup date on the Mac? there is 15k ADA sitting in the wallet. Willing to talk share of the ADA if there is a successful way to retreive it.
Thanks

Reset spending password - restore the wallet using the seed words

If u don’t have the seed words u will need to try as many password u can (brute force)

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Hi @Linards_Berzins,

When you created your wallet in daedalus in 2018 you have absolutely certainly got your recovery phrase. Moreover you must have entered it back in before the wallet being allowed to be created. Now when daedalus shows you your recovery phrase on screen you must done something to be able to type it back in for confirmation in the next screen. So maybe you created a screen shot you still got somewhere (very bad practice)? Or wrote it somewhere? Or maybe you saved it online somewhere or on your computer?

Anyway without the recovery phrase or spending address you can’t retrieve your ada unfortunately.

However, you can try your spending password as many times as you want. Think back…

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I see, this must be the last option i guess, there is no way for me to remmeber teh passphrase or teh spending password. Do you know of any software that can do that, or other way? Thanks

It was a simple wallet right?
U should have the seed words somewhere… without bkp the seed words (picture or on paper) u could not completed the installation

I had it, cannot find it for 3 years. Pretty much 99.9999% probability it is lost

You will find it I am sure

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Most end up finding them eventually. I say grab all of you passwords from all of your website accounts since 2018 and input them into spending password. Can’t hurt, and one of them may help you remember your Daedalus one.

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Thanks, I did all that, tried systematically to remember it. Wrote everything down in the notepad, what was tried, what to try, noting. Could tools like these Popular tools for brute-force attacks [updated for 2020] - Infosec Resources

somehow crack the PW on Daedalus? Or it pointless, as the security of teh wallet will not allow it.

Although I understand your problem, the fact that non-hardware ada wallets can be brute forced because they have no attempts restrictions, is the exact reason why I ran to start using a hardware wallets. I don’t like the fact that it is even possible to brute force the password!

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Since you have the month and year of your wallet setup, one option you may be able to exploit is regressive hypnosis to recall the events of that day. I sent a similar suggestion via LinkedIn Messenger to Stefan Thomas, who famously forgot or misplaced his keys to a laptop with hundreds of millions worth of BTC. Not sure if he ever tried it. In any case, your event was much more recent, and a good forensic hypnotherapist may be able to bring you back to that day and recall every keystroke (or even where you wrote down your 12-word phrase). Good luck!

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If you have some idea of the spending password (e.g. you know parts of the words, but maybe missing a few numbers or symbols) then there is a slim chance you could brute force it, but you’d need to start with something mostly correct.

As for the 12 word recovery phrase, if you knew almost all of the words then brute force recovery is possible, fixing 2-3 words is feasible but more than that is not.

To put it another way, if anyone with no knowledge of your 12 word phrase or password could simply brute force your ADA, nothing would’ve stopped them from doing so already, or from doing the same to everyone else’s wallets too. There are some bitcoin wallets with billions of dollars in them, if brute force was even remotely feasible it would’ve been done already.

:slight_smile: thanks, was thinking I could try that too

This holds only true for the recovery phrase. Just guessing the spending password right can’t do anything without access to that specific wallet file stored on his computer.

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What can also help. I know someone who forgot his spending password, tried all the passwords he uses and then recreated the wallet with his recovery phrase. Then when he was asked to make a new spending password, provided the same and then got an error message: ‘Password must be at least X characters long’ and he immediately knew what the problem and his original spending password was!

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