Crypto Assets Recovery: Restore Your Crypto Wallet with Ease
Has your crypto seed phrase gone missing? You’re not alone, and it’s not the end of the world. Crypto Asset Recovery is a professional service dedicated to recovering lost crypto accounts.
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Who's Behind the Project?
This innovative startup hails from New Hampshire and was launched in 2017 by the dynamic duo, Chris and Charlie Brooks. Inspired by the alarming amount of cryptocurrency forever lost due to forgotten access details, especially for those with a finite supply like Bitcoin, Chris became enamored with the concept of wallet recovery.
He then passed on his enthusiasm for this noble cause to his son, Charlie. With a hefty amount of experience in tech development under his belt, including serving as the Vice President of Technology at Carescout and working as a programmer at Fidelity Investments, Chris was well-equipped to lead the charge. Fresh from earning a Computer Science degree from the University of Vermont, Charlie was eager to join the team.
Operating as white hat hackers, the father-son team sees themselves as digital Samaritans. Their mission? To aid those who've forgotten their account passwords and are unwilling to surrender their digital assets. Part of their ambitious plan is to reclaim a portion of the estimated 20% of BTC deemed permanently lost. However, this can only be achieved if the coin owners enlist Brooks' assistance.
Chris and Charlie Brooks. Source: bosshunting
The white hat hackers, Chris and Charlie Brooks, claim they can retrieve about 35% of all forgotten passwords. Based on their estimates, between 68,110 and 92,855 lost bitcoins can be reclaimed and reintroduced into circulation. They encourage holders who've abandoned hope of ever seeing those cherished digits on their balance again to send an application through the Crypto Asset Recovery website.
But their service extends beyond Bitcoin. The Brooks also offer to help reclaim other digital assets.
So, what accounts can be recovered?
The service supports the restoration of seed phrases for all types of BIP-39 or ERC-20 tokens, including outdated mnemonics.
This encompasses wallets such as:
- Blockchain.com
- Bitcoin Core
- Multibit
- Electrum;
- MetaMask
- MyEtherWallet
- Mist Ethereum Wallet
- Dogechain Core
- Dogechain.info
The project's founders maintain that this list will expand over time as they continually learn to navigate new protocols and improve the effectiveness of their recovery method.
How does it work?
The process of Crypto Asset Recovery is quite intriguing. They kick things off by collecting a comprehensive list of all previously utilized passwords by a client and extrapolate every potential combination that the client could have possibly contrived. Once they've amassed a staggering array of “hundreds of millions or even billions of potential password patterns,” Chris and Charlie set to work, rigorously testing each one against the client's encrypted wallet. To jumpstart the recovery of their assets, clients need to offer up passwords from other platforms and a secured backup of their private keys.
As Chris puts it, “To conduct a wallet recovery, we need two things primarily. The first is a wallet backup and that’s the encrypted copy of your private key. The second is your password guesses. Once we have both of those things, the first thing we are going to do is take your wallet backup and we’re going to apply a hashing algorithm to it.”
The decryption process can range from a matter of seconds to an expanse of several days, largely dependent on the number of potential combinations, which can sometimes skyrocket to astronomical counts. This procedure of cracking the code is performed on an isolated server, and the duo assures that it's as safe as houses.
The Brooks operate on a contingency basis, only pocketing 20% of the recovered assets for their services. If the client's wallet balance turns up empty or the elusive password remains undeciphered, no fees are levied. Looking ahead, they have plans to launch a self-service platform to remove all middlemen from the “client-wallet” equation, even if it means phasing themselves out.
So, what's the snag?
Aside from the usual disclaimer that this piece is grounded in data gleaned from the official CryptoAssetRecovery site and doesn't push for the use of these services, we have an extra observation to make.
What about those who make it a point to use online generators for crafting complex passwords? Handing these over to even the most noble hackers won't necessarily help them decipher how these clients go about creating their passwords, nor the logic driving this process. And what if the backup of the private key is also lost?
Well, they might just find a savior in artificial intelligence…
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