Hi everyone,
Here's the situation : I have an encrypted virtual machine (VMware) with a bunch of bitcoins in it, from the time when I was doing some business experimentations with the cryptocurrency. I had something like 1.5 BTC, which is currently worth ~$750. The problem is : I only have a very, very vague idea of the password I used to encrypt the virtual machine. I already tried a lot of possible combinations, without success.
I'm running out of ideas. There's no password recovery software for this kind of encryption, and bruteforcing the thing might take a couple of millenias.
The technical approach : because I have a vague idea of the password I used, I might be able to generate a wordlist with crunch or john the ripper, then having a shell script trying all these generated passwords one by one, which could take a few weeks (that's more acceptable). If someone here has some experience on IT security and pentesting, I'll be glad to hear about it. I don't exactly know how to generate a wordlist with determined patterns, because that's how I compose my passwords : I have about a dozen of "words", like, let's say, "bacon", "eggs" and "sausage", mixed with % and @ and a few digits, like "56" or "65". A typical Tomek password looks like :
EGGS56%bacons65@
So, question for the techies : do you think it's possible to generate a wordlist with my patterns, so that I can test this wordlist in a reasonable delay ?
The "other" approach : I'll leave the spirit board out of the picture for the moment ;p but if members knows about some techniques to remember something you forgot, meditation or whatever, well, that could be handy too.
Here's the situation : I have an encrypted virtual machine (VMware) with a bunch of bitcoins in it, from the time when I was doing some business experimentations with the cryptocurrency. I had something like 1.5 BTC, which is currently worth ~$750. The problem is : I only have a very, very vague idea of the password I used to encrypt the virtual machine. I already tried a lot of possible combinations, without success.
I'm running out of ideas. There's no password recovery software for this kind of encryption, and bruteforcing the thing might take a couple of millenias.
The technical approach : because I have a vague idea of the password I used, I might be able to generate a wordlist with crunch or john the ripper, then having a shell script trying all these generated passwords one by one, which could take a few weeks (that's more acceptable). If someone here has some experience on IT security and pentesting, I'll be glad to hear about it. I don't exactly know how to generate a wordlist with determined patterns, because that's how I compose my passwords : I have about a dozen of "words", like, let's say, "bacon", "eggs" and "sausage", mixed with % and @ and a few digits, like "56" or "65". A typical Tomek password looks like :
EGGS56%bacons65@
So, question for the techies : do you think it's possible to generate a wordlist with my patterns, so that I can test this wordlist in a reasonable delay ?
The "other" approach : I'll leave the spirit board out of the picture for the moment ;p but if members knows about some techniques to remember something you forgot, meditation or whatever, well, that could be handy too.
