Need help recovering my 2010 wallet.dat with 8.5 BTC

Hey guys, I'm looking for some advice on recovering a really old wallet.dat from late 2010 that has 8.5 BTC in it. I’ve extracted the hash, but I'm stuck trying to recover it.

Question first: is this your legit wallet.dat or something you found? Just being real here, I need to know if it’s yours.

You should try using better wordlists and stick with the latest version of hashcat. John the Ripper takes forever.

Yeah it’s mine. I forgot the passwords from back then and they were all pretty short, under 12 characters. Didn’t think to back it up either... just sitting on an old HDD. Got the hash, but all the keys from memory dumps are still encrypted.

So, is your wallet really from 2010? If it was used later, it might've been updated with encryption that started in 2011. Just checking.

BTCRecover is a solid choice, dude. It’s pretty much recommended here. You can attach your extracted hash and make use of it.

Check out FinderOuter as well. It's a decent recovery tool. Just be sure to run it offline when you try.

Always make copies of your wallet file and never work directly with the original. Better safe than sorry. Keep it off any device you don’t trust.

As long as it isn’t tied to that address 1KDUcZh5Z6H1of4Pwoy5ojJtkQxcQBHhnH, I’d recommend BTCRecover. Remembering parts of the password can help a ton.

What’s up with that 1KDU wallet?

That's a known address with the same amount and date you mentioned, but it's tied to a bunch of fake wallet.dat offers online.

What’s the file size? I have an 8.5 BTC wallet.dat that’s about 81920 bytes. Yours might be fake if it lines up with that address.