How to Recover Your Bitcoin Wallet Password If You Forget It

A few years ago nobody would have cared if you had lost your Bitcoin wallet's password, probably not even you. After all, there was a time when bitcoins were worth pennies practically. I personally know a man who spent 200 bitcoins on Steam back in 2011. You can imagine how much he hates himself right now. As of the time or writing a single coin is worth almost 7000 USD. That's quite a lot. Naturally, you want to protect your wallet and your investment with a strong, reliable password. Though, the question arises: What happens if you forget the password?

Your Bitcoin wallet is just a simple collection of Bitcoin addresses. Basically, it stores the corresponding keys to those addresses. There are different security levels depending on your chosen wallet provider, and some of the cannot restore your password if you forget it. So what you do now? Well, you can to try to remember your password. You can use the 12-word Wallet Recovery Phrase. Or you can try a password cracker as a last resort.

How to use a password cracker to recover my lost bitcoin wallet password

First, you need the latest version of you Bitcoin Wallet file (usually located at various locations on your computer depending on your OS), powerful hardware (and I mean really powerful), and some idea of what your password is. You also need the password cracking tool, and you have two options here, John the Ripper or Hashcat. John the Ripper is a bit more hands-on. You'll have to fine tune everything including what file exactly it is your hacking, define the hash you're trying to decipher, choose the word list for the cracking process (this is easier for you since you should have at least some idea of what your password was), and choose the number of CPU cores you'd want to use. Choose the one you prefer and let's get started.

How to avoid password messiness in the future

Everything comes down to this: We're merely bad at coming up with passwords. Virtually every security expert on the Earth agrees that the weakest link in any security is the human element. Part of the problem is most people don't put any thought into the passwords they're using. You need to have a password that's both long and complex to minimize the chances of getting hacked. Every added character exponentially increases the strength of your password due to the uncertainty principle and using a varied mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols will protect you against brute force and dictionary-style attacks. But this is where the other problems start. It's hard enough to think up such a random miasma of different characters, and it's even harder to remember it. You may want to write it down, but that poses obvious security risks of its own.

The solution? Get yourself a reliable password manager. Not only can a good password manager come up with a strong password for you, but it can remember it for you. It can also automatically log you in websites, autofill boring forms for you, and add extra security via features like Two-Factor Authentication.