wsucoug95

Q: iTunes asking for backup password???

I am upgrading my iphone 4 to iOS 5. I backed up my phone (via iTunes 10.5) and downloaded and installed iOS 5. I am now going through the setup process and it is at the "Restore from iTunes Backup" step. I connect to iTunes and iTunes is prompting me for a password to "unlock your iPhone backup file." No I did not encrypt the iPhone backup, nor is it or was it checked in iTunes. I have tried my iTunes password, my 4 digit unlock code for the iPhone, and several other passwords. When I did the backup an hour ago I was not asked for a password. I am at a loss as to what it is.

iPhone 4

Posted on Oct 12, 2011 1:11 PM

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Q: iTunes asking for backup password???

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  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Aug 25, 2015 7:13 PM in response to jared275
    Level 9 (50,449 points)
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    Aug 25, 2015 7:13 PM in response to jared275

    jared275 wrote:

     

    Lawrence Finch wrote:

     

    I am confident that servers have competent administrators that understand how security should be implemented. That's why there are tests and certifications for server administrators.

     

    Server backup software works as expected: it doesn't cripple your server when you make an encrypted backup.  You don't even need to prepare for a test or certification to know that!

    Did you need to take a test in order not to understand the need for preserving a password? maybe writing it down?

  • by jared275,

    jared275 jared275 Aug 25, 2015 7:16 PM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 25, 2015 7:16 PM in response to Csound1

     

    Did you need to take a test in order not to understand the need for preserving a password? maybe writing it down?

     


    Normally, the only thing that should require a password after encrypting something is when you want to decrypt it.  Since I don't want to decrypt what I encrypted (the backup on my local computer), I shouldn't have to enter the encryption password.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Aug 25, 2015 7:19 PM in response to jared275
    Level 9 (50,449 points)
    Desktops
    Aug 25, 2015 7:19 PM in response to jared275

    Feel free not to.

  • by janethia,

    janethia janethia Sep 4, 2015 4:55 PM in response to cafarrer
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 4, 2015 4:55 PM in response to cafarrer

    As I said in a previous reply to the same problem on a different page: I know all three passwords for apple and itunes. I write them down. I had three; two I had written down. The third I remember because I only recently changed it. The fix for cafarrer doesn't work for me. It's a shame.

     

    I really hate these Apple forum discussions because I'm desperate when I come here, but mostly I get other people with the same problem, not a solution. What a shame.

  • by rocksteady1987,

    rocksteady1987 rocksteady1987 Sep 4, 2015 5:22 PM in response to janethia
    Level 1 (35 points)
    Sep 4, 2015 5:22 PM in response to janethia

    The only way to get a encrypted backup is to know the password. If you don't know the encrypted password then you can not get the backup. If you want to take it off you have to restore the phone to factory settings. WRITE DOWN YOUR PASSWORDS  not just the passwords but what is capital and what is lower case

  • by elvindeath,

    elvindeath elvindeath Sep 4, 2015 8:15 PM in response to wsucoug95
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 4, 2015 8:15 PM in response to wsucoug95

    Ran into this issue tonight.  The whole family was due to upgrade smartphones, and, humorously, I dumped by iPhone 5s for a Galaxy Note 5 because I was absolutely sick of dealing with Apple's crap integration with non-Mac platforms.

     

    Anyway, I backed the wife's iPhone up on my PC before we went.  I purposefully created a non-encrypted backup, because I knew the file would only be temporary.  She wanted to stay with Apple, so I brought her new iPhone 6 home and went to restore the backup and - Surprise - it asked for a password. 

     

    For the next two hours, I tried every trick in this thread and none of them worked - it wasn't either of our Apple ID passwords, it wasn't any permutation of any Apple password with or without numbers or capital letters.  It wasn't my PC Windows login password, nor anything else I use regularly ... turned out - for some freaking inexplicable reason - it applied the password I use to log in to my Citrix remote sessions for work.  It's nothing my wife EVER used on her cell phone, nor nothing I ever used for any Apple login ever.  Absolutely ridiculous.

     

    So tired of Apple and this kind of crap.  I made the decision to dump Apple the minute I upgraded my iOS last time and found out I could no longer do home network streaming without paying $10 per month.  Tonight's escapade just reinforced my belief I made the right choice.  Enjoy your iDevices folks ... I'll be Apple Free starting tomorrow morning !

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Sep 4, 2015 8:36 PM in response to elvindeath
    Level 9 (50,449 points)
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    Sep 4, 2015 8:36 PM in response to elvindeath

    And you really think that your phone read your mind and entered one of your passwords on its own.

     

    Really?

  • by elvindeath,

    elvindeath elvindeath Sep 5, 2015 4:54 AM in response to Csound1
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 5, 2015 4:54 AM in response to Csound1

    Csound1 wrote:

     

    And you really think that your phone read your mind and entered one of your passwords on its own.

     

    Really?

    No.  I believe it pulled a password I used in a different App on the same PC and applied it to my backup file despite the fact "encryption" was unchecked in iTunes.  It's a lot more plausible than 21 pages of users reporting the same mass delusion.

     

    After 36 years of programming and using PCs, I'm pretty observant about such thinks as whether I've entered a password, and what that password was.  My routine is rather specific - if I enter a password - FOR ANYTHING - it simultaneously gets recorded in the mystical place where I keep all my passwords.  The only reason I was able to determine the password iTunes used when creating the backup was working my way back through that password list.

     

    Perhaps the greatest thing about switching phone platforms is that I will never, ever have to boot up iTunes again in my life.  What a steaming pile of coding that is.

  • by Lawrence Finch,

    Lawrence Finch Lawrence Finch Sep 5, 2015 6:18 AM in response to elvindeath
    Level 8 (37,982 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 5, 2015 6:18 AM in response to elvindeath

    After 36 years of programming you should know that passwords on a computer are not stored in a way that they can be pulled from a password store without the cooperation of the user. And passwords are not stored in plain text anywhere on your computer; they are stored either encrypted or using an irreversible hash. So what you think happened is simply impossible.

  • by jared275,

    jared275 jared275 Sep 5, 2015 1:58 PM in response to Lawrence Finch
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 5, 2015 1:58 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

    With 36 years of programming, he would have also discovered that programmers, including programmers at Microsoft and Apple are infallible and never make mistakes.  (Such as the iTunes programmers who might be referencing stored credentials in the Windows Credential Manager, many of which, due to the infallible wisdom of Microsoft, are stored in an unencrypted (or perhaps decrypted while the user is logged in), insecure way, perhaps referenced by iTunes by an index of an enumeration of credentials, or by a (repeatedly used) username, instead of by an application-unique identifier, and iTunes is either accessing the insecure unencrypted password directly, or else conducting a forward hash against an existing credential's hash in order to unlock the never-encrypted backup from the interface that iTunes locked without the user asking.  I don't know exactly how this works, but I don't need to do further research since surely there has never been any security breaches regarding the storage of passwords, ever, in the history of computing, so this is simply impossible.)

     

    Here I am now, looking at Nirsoft Password Recovery tool, seeing a whole bunch of my Windows passwords in clear text, without forward hashing, but since this is impossible, I must also be suffering delusions.

     

    "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."  And the truth must therefore be that this support forum should support its people by handing out medication for mass delusion.  "Think different," indeed.

     

    288077__apple-pill-sign_p.jpg

  • by jared275,

    jared275 jared275 Sep 5, 2015 1:50 PM in response to jared275
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 5, 2015 1:50 PM in response to jared275

    FWIW, I'm inclined to stick with Apple for mobile devices, and their stubbornly flawed and (partially) broken iTunes software because they do seem to take security more seriously than Android (or Microsoft, although they improved the credential storage in Windows 8.)  However, the quality of support in this forum thread remains hostile to people having legitimate problems, so that doesn't speak well for the community of Apple users.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Sep 5, 2015 2:29 PM in response to jared275
    Level 9 (50,449 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 5, 2015 2:29 PM in response to jared275

    Yes of course, after all, users never make mistakes do they?

     

    You have a good one now

  • by elvindeath,

    elvindeath elvindeath Sep 5, 2015 5:37 PM in response to Lawrence Finch
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 5, 2015 5:37 PM in response to Lawrence Finch

    Lawrence Finch wrote:

     

    After 36 years of programming you should know that passwords on a computer are not stored in a way that they can be pulled from a password store without the cooperation of the user. And passwords are not stored in plain text anywhere on your computer; they are stored either encrypted or using an irreversible hash. So what you think happened is simply impossible.

    Yes, obviously there is  a 21 page thread dating back over 4 years discussing a problem that doesn't exist.  I am sure myself and the hundred or so other users on this thread are all idiots and/or inventing this issue.  I mean, that's the only explanation right ?  That we all have nothing better to do than perpetuate this myth of inexplicable passwords being attached to backup files ?  God knows there wouldn't be a problem with the code Apple wrote, right ?

     

    Whatever - don't really care.  I posted how I solved it for anyone else who suffered the same mass delusion - basically just start working through any password you ever used for any piece of software you used on the PC you made the backup file on, and you may eventually stumble across the password associated with the backup file.  Good luck !

  • by Hotchili,

    Hotchili Hotchili Sep 30, 2015 8:22 AM in response to elvindeath
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Sep 30, 2015 8:22 AM in response to elvindeath

    I think that since Apple can lock down a computer that's halfway across the world using icloud, they could also offer an option to use that technology to give the necessary credentials to unencrypt a local file. Obviously many people are losing data because of the current situation, and whether they mistakenly input a password without realizing it or simply forgot it, there could be a method of resolving it using the icloud platform, if Apple were so inclined.

  • by Csound1,

    Csound1 Csound1 Sep 30, 2015 8:44 AM in response to elvindeath
    Level 9 (50,449 points)
    Desktops
    Sep 30, 2015 8:44 AM in response to elvindeath

    Yes, pretty standard advice for when you forget a password, writing it down before you forget it is also a good method.

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