Device broken, phrase intact
The issue you're facing isn't a recovery issue. Get a new compatible wallet and restore using your phrase. Your funds live on the blockchain, not in the device.
Straightforward
A hardware wallet contains keys in a secure element created to protect against extraction — including lab-based attacks. This represents the device functioning as intended; therefore, the recovery phrase is not a copy of your wallet. It is your wallet.
Hardware wallets have been developed with the specific goal of resisting extraction; and they succeed. However, what can typically be recovered is usually some type of seed phrase, a wallet file or keystore that was previously stored on a now failed storage system.
This is the underlying design principle — and the reason why the recovery process operates in this manner.
When generating private keys, the keys reside within an internal secure element — a tamper-resistant chip such as those used in bank cards and passports — and are designed to remain there at all times. When approving a transaction, the user's device generates the required signature internally — but only transmits the signature outward. The actual private key itself is never transmitted from the device to the user's computer — which is the primary objective behind creating these devices.
These chips have been designed as countermeasures to the types of attacks that a recovery lab might attempt; e.g., physical probing, side channel analysis, fault injection, decapsulation. These chips also contain "active meshes" and sensors that wipe on tampering; they contain encrypted bus lines within the chip itself. The protections described above are not incidentally provided — they are required for certification. And these protections were independently certified.
Therefore, if a company claims to be able to recover keys from a secure element, then they are claiming to provide something that the component is specifically designed to protect against. Therefore you should be very cautious when dealing with companies making such claims about wallets containing significant monetary value.
And what those words actually mean.
The recovery phrase is not a password nor a hint. According to BIP-39, the recovery phrase is an encoded human-readable representation of the entropy from which your wallet was created. Each word corresponds to a particular predefined index into a fixed list of 2048 words. Additionally, a user may optionally specify a passphrase along with their recovery phrase, and together they deterministically regenerate every key the wallet has ever held or will hold.
Those twelve or twenty-four words have two important side effects. Any person who knows that twelve or twenty-four word phrase can access your money, regardless of where the actual hardware device is located. Additionally, knowing that twelve or twenty-four word phrase allows you to replace the entire hardware device. In other words, buying a new wallet for example from any supported manufacturer will restore all of your existing accounts.
This also implies that the twelve or twenty-four word phrase should never be typed into a computer; never photographed; never entered into a password manager; and never e-mailed to yourself. The security model is based on the idea that it does exist exclusively off-line.
Put simply, as this is a space riddled by false claims.
The issue you're facing isn't a recovery issue. Get a new compatible wallet and restore using your phrase. Your funds live on the blockchain, not in the device.
Water, fire, faded ink, a partially torn sheet. Reading damaged paper takes some real effort; BIP-39 has a checksum, so a small number of missing or uncertain words can sometimes be narrowed by validating candidates.
This is essentially software wallets, versus hardware wallets. We'll recover the file if the drive has failed. If the password is weak, or only part of the password is recalled we will try to guess the rest of the password.
That's simply unrecoverable. Neither we nor anyone else can get around the fact that the chip is designed specifically to stop someone getting into your account, and no matter how much money they throw at the problem, it won't happen.
The difference between our work and a wallet manufacturer's technical support.
If a drive, NAS or laptop storing wallet files, exchange records or an encrypted keystore has failed, then that is standard recovery work and that is what we do. The storage is then captured as a read-only image and the files are pulled out intact. Single drives are priced from £300 +VAT. Arrays are priced from £500 +VAT. All of these prices are quoted after a free 48-hour diagnostic.
If an encrypted wallet file is recovered and the password associated with it cannot be found, we can perform professional password recovery against it; using GPU acceleration and assisted by anything you remember about the password. This works well for short, reused or partially remembered passwords. It does not work when there is a very large number of possible options such as a long randomly generated password. We will advise you if you are in either situation prior to committing to recover the password.
We will not attempt to claim we can extract keys from the secure element of a hardware wallet. If the seed phrase is truly lost and the keys were never outside that chip, then the money is unrecoverable – and you should be extremely cautious of any company claiming otherwise.
No. The keys are stored within a secure element specifically designed for resistance against physical probing, side channel attacks and fault injection — which is how the product operates according to design. Be very cautious of any company that says differently.
Not if you have the recovery phrase. All of your money exists on the blockchain and not in the device itself; therefore, with the appropriate replacement wallet, all of your existing accounts will restore from those exact words. The device may need to be replaced; however, the phrase cannot be replaced.
A human-readable representation of entropy your wallet was generated from. Under BIP-39 each word corresponds to a specific index within a predetermined 2048 word list. When combined, these words determine the regeneration of all keys held by your wallet.
Occasionally. BIP-39 has a checksum. A small number of missing or uncertain words can be narrowed by validating candidates; however, there will typically be no viable solution when a large portion of the phrase is missing.
Yes – that is just ordinary data recovery work. We will take an image of your encrypted storage, then extract the file you want without changing anything. If the password for this encrypted file is also lost, we may be able to attempt password recovery, which works on weak or partly remembered passwords.
No. The whole system is designed around the idea that the phrase only ever exists offline, so it should never be typed into a computer, photographed, stored in a password manager or emailed to yourself. Whoever possesses those words has control over all of your money.