Hive Account Loss And Recovery: A Personal Tale Unfolds Between Two Full Moons

This is the second post within the space of October 2020 that I never thought I'd get to write. But writing it I am, having just (at 14.30 UTC today) successfully recovered this account from the brink of extinction.

TL;DR: On 1 Oct I lost access to this account, @barge. I thought it was gone but there were still some tiny slivers of hope. This post describes the ebbing and flowing of that hope. This is the story of how I lost my account on one full moon and then regained it on another full moon, both within the same calendar month. It is also the story of the help I received, without which I would not be writing this here!

Flashbacks to when I was still 'in it':

15 October:

As I type these words in the middle of October, I do not yet know whether I will be successful in recovering my account. I am hopeful that these words will be posted from the @barge account, but atm I am here, on the other side of the 9-minute divide that separates me from accessing it. On Oct 31 at 2.30pm, I will be leaping over that divide. My research into account recovery on Hive has indicated that the process is robust, and that the divide is small enough to jump over in the 9 minute-window that I have available to me.

Even the fact that I have this window is a little bit of a miracle - to me anyhow! At the start of October, I was convinced I had lost access to my account for good. This state of mind was morose and ignorant of the full process of account recovery. I therefore didn't understand that I still stood a decent chance.

I posted the issue in the peakD Discord server and @asgarth directed me to the Hive channel, where @deathwing told me 'not to worry' - the first time that I began to entertain real hope of recovering my account. I felt a heaviness lifting. He went on to provide me with tools and information which I have since armed myself with. I also studied @abitcoinskeptic's excellent guide to account recovery which provided triangulation and a great overview of the recovery process.

I intend to do a rehearsal/run-through of recovering an account using HiveWorld as the tool and a couple of unused accounts I have the keys to. I will do this closer to the time and wish to have the kind of confidence in what I'm gonna be doing that comes through doing it.

My post on the loss of the account is rather long. I'll TL;DR-it below:

• on 1 Oct I changed account recovery for @barge from @steem to @nutraj (an unused alt of mine)
• I also changed my keys on @barge and promptly lost them (see post for details)
• I still have the old keys for @barge, so I can initiate account recovery (valid for 30 days after key change)
• no point asking @steem to recover, will have to wait until recovery account switches to @nutraj
• the 'recovery account' will switch to @nutraj just over 9 minutes before the old keys are no longer valid for account recovery, hence the '9-min' window.

There you have it, now what account will this be posted from?

26 October:

Things have moved on in this emotional rollercoaster of a month.

The first movement was down down down!

On the 22nd I attempted to do a run-through of the recovery process using HiveWorld and two test accounts. I ended up getting RPCErrors coming out of my ears and a heavy, sinking feeling. The process just wouldn't go through and kept returning a 'Missing Authority' error at the very last stage - ie after successfully having requested the account to be recovered. I knew that the nodes had been playing up since the last hardfork and a lot of code seems to have been affected. This may have had an effect on the recovery process and I didn't know whom to contact or what to do.

My heart sank once again as @barge seemed to recede into the distance. Also, around this period the WLEO on Uniswap had been hacked and there was the stress of losing not only my account and all that is in it, but also the liquidity I had provided to the Uniswap pool. Double Whack!

After dipping really low, things started to pick up again for me. @khaleelkazi and the LEO team were able to not only salvage some of the pool funds, but, by foregoing a significant chunk of his own crypto, Khal made whole and complete everyone's initial investment. Amazing!

I returned once again to the Hive support section on Discord and posted about the issue I was having with the test account recovery RPC errors. As before, @deathwing got back to me right away with some further suggestions, including trying Hivetasks account recovery. He also informed me that it would be possible to broadcast the transaction myself!

However, the process at Hivetasks returned the same RPC errors as Hiveworld.

This left me with the only seeming option of figuring out how to broadcast the transaction myself. I asked a friend or two if they knew how to do this, but they didn't. I had a look online to see what I could find. I have a few years of experience in providing tech support (Adobe) and have done a little bit of basic programming in the past, but this I concluded was beyond what I could feasibly figure out by myself in the time available.

"Perhaps @deathwing could run this script for me at his end", I thought. "I've received friendly support from him twice over this issue and I've checked his profile on the chain. I'd be happy to trust him and not hold him accountable if it failed. I'd also be happy to offer him 20% of what @barge holds in Hive and LEO if he were willing to do this for me."

I drafted out a request/proposal consisting of my above-mentioned thoughts and DM'ed him on Discord. @deathwing got back immediately, his very first response informing me that he didn't want anything in return for helping!

What followed was a 4-hour marathon in which he walked me through installing Python and running a script written for the purposes of recovering an account on the Hive blockchain. All I would have to do was enter the account names, the old and new Master passwords of the account to be recovered, and the Active key of the recovery account. I'd then have to use command prompt to start up Python and run the script.

But setting this up was not a particularly smooth or straighforward process. I kept encountering errors and he, undaunted, kept coming back with alternatives - "try this, try that...". @deathwing's approach was to encourage me to do this myself and he didn't give up even when, at one stage, I came close to doing so and asked him if wouldn't just do it for me, please? His response was clear - "It's not that I can't or won't, it's just better if you do this yourself".

Fortunately, I had just enough experience to follow his instructions. I took time out and reinstalled Python, configuring it exactly as per an online guide he'd asked me to follow.

This time Python started up! We moved incrementally closer and closer.

Throughout the support session @deathwing's demeanour was calm, unhurried and undramatic (apart from a few gasps of frustration at having to support a windows machine :). I never felt rushed; never felt belittled for overlooking basic typos in the command prompt; never felt any tech-support scorn. I accepted his insistence that it would be better if I did this for myself rather than getting him to do it for me. I was greatly impressed by his competence and patience in guiding me through the process (and yes, I'm proud of myself for having been able to get there in the end too :).

And so it worked at last! I was now empowered to broadcast and sign a transaction via a Python script that would recover an account where the current keys were lost, but the recently used keys were available. We ran it on the two test accounts and I confirmed the success of this by entering the new keys of the test account into Keychain and logging in. YES!!!

This all happened last night. By the end of the session my head was baked and my heart full of gratitude. I now had the tools and methodology to recover @barge by myself. I had to catch my breath.

On top of it all, @deathwing went on to ask for the exact timing of the 9-minute window I have for account recovery and said that he would be on standby when the time came. He left with a few more practical tips and his good wishes.

What a guy!

Since then, I have run the script a few times to ensure I have really really really got it. I have another 5 days to go and I will run the script again before the 31st.

30 October:

Fewer than 24 hours to go now! I ran the recovery script yesterday on my test accounts and it went through smoothly. I hung around Hiveblocks for 9 minutes at 13:30, 14:30 and 15:30 in an OCD covering of bases and page refreshing just in case the algorithm kicked in a day before expected (or an hour before or after, clocks having shifted). The recovery account on Hiveblocks remained 'steem'.

The script is written with barge configurations and is all set to go. At 14:30 tomorrow, once the recovery account switches to @nutraj, I will run the script and hold my breath as Python prints its magic words on my screen.

I want to be posting this through @barge, may it be so!

The Present Moment and Onwards:

This morning I checked and double checked the info, making sure everything was ready to roll. My recovery window ran from 14:29:36 (UTC) until 14:38:57 (UTC). As it approached, I calmed myself for some minutes before sitting at the computer. @deathwing, as promised, was on standby on Discord. At the precise, expected moment, the recovery account for @barge changed from @steem to @nutraj. With trembling hand I gave focus to the command prompt window and hit return.

The script ran like a well-oiled machine and the magic print proclaimed that the account had been recovered. I verified this by logging in a @barge and performing a few transactions like voting, commenting, claiming rewards.

Everything tip-top, I am so utterly delighted. It is still sinking in!

During my absence from @barge I started using @krunkypuram and stayed focused on LeoFinance stuff for the duration of my lockout. I kinda avoided the Barge side of things as it was rather painful to be reminded of loss. Going forward, I am going to transfer my LEO stake to Krunkypuram and continue to use it as my main account for posting through the LeoFinance interface. Barge will remain my main account for creative writing, photography and whatever else I feel like.

Thanks for reading 🙏
Barge (aka @krunkypuram)

Links:

• https://peakd.com/hive-114105/@abitcoinskeptic/how-to-recover-a-stolen-or-hacked-steem-account-password-recovery
• https://peakd.com/hive-198327/@peak.answers/how-does-recovery-work
• https://peakd.com/hive/@deathwing/psa-change-your-recovery-account-now
• https://peakd.com/hive/@okean123/the-hive-account-recovery-probably-doesn-t-work-the-way-you-think
• https://peakd.com/hive/@krunkypuram/personal-announcement-barge-is-locked-up-or-how-i-lost-access-to-my-main-account

Lessons:

• change your recovery account and get it far, far away from @steem. It's highly unlikely you'd ever recover it should you need to, as some have already discovered
• if your Hive keys are the same as they were on Steem before the birth of Hive, change them too! HOWEVER, first change your recovery account, then wait a day or two (at least) before changing your keys. This time-interval will be your recovery window should it go wrong like it did for me. I had just 9 minutes!
• the Hive recovery process is robust, well thought out and it works!

For The Hive Reader's Consideration:

@deathwing is a Hive witness and now has my vote for evermore. If you are on the lookout for an inspiring witness to cast your vote for, please consider voting for him on the strength of what you have read here. If you wish, you can do this by going here: https://vote.hive.uno/@deathwing.