MultiBit HD · BTC

Recover a MultiBit HD wallet.

MultiBit HD was a popular desktop Bitcoin wallet, now discontinued — leaving many users with old, password-locked wallet files.

Why people get locked out

For a forgotten MultiBit HD password, common now that the software is no longer maintained.

Can we recover it?

Yes. MultiBit HD is one of the formats that reduces to a check-only extract, so the fleet can test passwords against it safely — finding the password never exposes a key that holds funds. GPU-friendly at MultiBit HD's light scrypt settings. You pay 15% only if we recover it, and nothing if we don't.

Under the hood

The MultiBit HD extract, in detail.

Exactly what the fleet receives for this format — and why finding the password still can't move the funds.

Anatomy of the extract

What leaves your machine — and what never does

For a MultiBit HD wallet, this is the entire check-only extract the fleet receives. It can test a password, but it can never be turned back into a key that spends.

GPU $multibithd$
in the extract
  • the first 32 encrypted bytes of mbhd.wallet.aes
  • for version 0.5.0+ files: the 16-byte IV plus the first ciphertext block
stays on your device
  • the seed and keys in the later blocks — never sent
  • your addresses and balances
how a guess is checked

A correct password decrypts the first wallet block to the bitcoinj protobuf header; the seed is absent.

verifier the bitcoinj protobuf header
example extract
illustrative · synthetic
$multibithd$<first-32-wallet-bytes-hex>

Illustrative and synthetic — placeholder bytes.

on the wire

32 wallet bytes plus wrapper/checksum — the hardcoded scrypt salt is not a field extracted from the wallet.

password math (KDF)
scrypt (light parameters) + AES-256-CBC

MultiBit HD derives its key with scrypt N=16384, r=8, p=1 using a hardcoded salt and the UTF-16BE password, then encrypts the wallet with AES-256-CBC. Version 0.5+ files store the IV in the first 16 bytes; older files use a hardcoded IV.

how a guess is recognized
the bitcoinj protobuf header

A correct password decrypts the first wallet block to the bitcoinj protobuf header; the seed is absent.

extract format
$multibithd$

An open, published format. The agent checks every job matches it before running — so a real wallet can't be disguised as an extract.

See the full security model, or how a recovery works end to end.