Encrypt Backup Password Problem

This really saved me!!! I was trying all sort of passwords but it never occured to me that I should try my old apple id password.

Thanks a bunch! 🙂

This one has had me stumped for so long now and it seems the only way to resolve it is too reset my phone and that's worrying me with what I may lose and how much I might have to set up again (but it's looking less time consuming than either a brut force crack or waiting for Apple to at least enable you to reset it some way!).

I have spent hours on the phone to Apple, and they said that although the encryption is in that file it's also stored on the phone - I assumed this as I deleted all my backups and thought it might allow me to turn encryption off without a password, but nope!

I did set a password which I thought I would remember, yeah right - so I thought! ... and done it on a old windows PC which is now dead, since then I've now gone Mac Mini.

After being on the phone to Apple Support and being told of the reset, I then purchased Software to hack it and let me know what it was, this was flaky and their list of words that you put in a file to check didn't work right, I contacted the Software Company and they said there was a bug, I sent them my files and they couldn't crack it either. - So be warned if you go down the brute force route it can take weeks to crack if you don't have any clues to what it could be!

Where am I now ... hoping that something will pop back into my head on what it was OR Apple will allow a Password reset someway without wiping the phone! ... Coming from a software development role myself, it's not that hard to do but I suspect as its security its not going to happen!

There's a few things since having my Mac Mini I've encountered with Apple, I went for the ease of use but when you do hit problems ... they ARE PROBLEMS and take more time than not to resolve!

So if I reset ... are the Contacts etc sync'd back OK when I plug it into iTunes or will it wipe the ones on my Mac as there are none on my phone? ... I can live with losing settings, music, etc as I can add those back in but my main concerns is resetting the phone and getting Contacts back?

I'm certainly going to draw up a recovery plan for this one!

This is why we are all having so much trouble with this:

http://tech.kateva.org/2013/08/the-curse-of-itunes-encrypted-backups.html

The blog post includes two techniques for password recovery mentioned in this long thread -- if you are a Mac user. (I only tested the Keychain recovery option and it worked -- though by then I figured out my problem).

Apple should update their tech note on encrypted passwords to clarify the issue (passcode on phone is unrelated to password on iTunes). One problem is you set this password once and may never see it again. Serial number changes bring up the password request ...

There really are some usability issues here.

Good to see the blogger actually read this thread, where all of that information has been posted multiple times.

However, it missed the fact that if you have a MS Exchange account the pasword requirement may have been placed on the phone you your IT administrator, and the password is probably the domain password for your work computer at the time you added the Exchange account.

As irritaed as I am, as I really thought he wasn't, I have to admit that Lawrence was right all along. I'm certain that I never entered a password for this function before and tried every password I could remember, just in case, but to no avail. I have an algorythm in my head which I use to generate passwords quickly, based on associated prompts that would be present on screen etc to remind me in the future (as I'd be likely to stumble across such prompts at some stage in the future and use the algorythm to generate the password) and very unexpectidely, it worked when I triggered one. I really wasn't expecting to, and certainly don't remember ever entering it, even now that I've 'cracked' it. There's no way this would have been on there unless I'd have thought about it at some stage as it requires me to work through some maths (math if from US) to generate the password.

As frustrating as it is, it looks like the password does need to be input if a restore of backup is to be made.

A possible work around MIGHT be;

1) Delete/unsync all email accounts POP3 servers etc associated with device

2) Plug device into a different machine with itunes installed, and backup the phone there. (I think this might require you to authorise 1 of your 5 machines, but is a way you MIGHT be able to back up your device.

I haven't tried this and don't intend to, but I'm just throwing around ideas.

Good luck to everyone.

I had this same issue today. It turns out that the issue was related to changing of my lock PIN on my phone. I changed it from one 4 digit pin to another months ago but never noticed it was not being encrypted. Today, I tried all the passwords I had (including the actual iPhone backup password I had saved in Keypass) but they didn't work. I then tried my previous 4 digit PIN, and this worked. I, hopefully, will be able to change the password after it's done "backing up" again.

Hopefully this helps anyone who runs into this.

after hours of trials and errors and reading hundreds of posts here and elsewhere this is my final conclusion:

1) This is not an iTunes bug, there must be a password you have used long ago!

2) The password is one of your earlier , and possibly the very first password you used for your apple id, but i have no clue why!!

3) For me it was my very first apple id password! and Luckily it worked!

4 ) Good luck for you

Correct! I had been convinced I'd not set a password, until I realised, actually, I had. We just forget.

It's a bug of the mind. 😝

I didn't make a password, yet I got prompted for a password after I created an encrypted backup. I found that you enter your Apple ID password with no capitals. It worked!!

<Link With Personal Information Edited By Host>

Every backup that has a password had a password entered, whether you remember doing it or not. The password that works is the one you entered. You can go back and read the messages in this thread, and you will see that everyone who finally was able to restore their backup that the password was different, and from a different source. The only way your Apple ID password without caps will work is if you ENTERED your Apple ID password without caps the first time you created an encrypted backup.

Well, I've never done an encrypted backup before and decided I may as well if it'll save my passwords for me and it's refusing to let me pick a password. I'm horrible about backing up my iPhone and have never even backed up my iPad once in the 2 years I've had it and I know for certain that I have never even once done an encrypted backup so there's no password I'm forgetting. But I'm getting the same message everyone else is getting. I don't even have a pin set on my devices.

rbtwrld Is completely correct in that the iPhone backup has a bug that falsely encrypts it. I had the exact same problem, tried for 2 days all of the passwords I've ever used and was pulling my hair out until I found his post. I couldn't believe I had used a password that I couldn't remember nor had written down so went ahead and tried his fix.

1. I unplugged my phone (iPhone 5, IOS 7.0.2) from the USB cable connected to my computer (my phone was in new setup/recovery mode on the screen because an update I was installing failed)
2. Held down the home button until the screen went blank
3. Plugged the phone back into the USB cable connected to my computer while iTunes was open.
4. My phone automatically started recovering the backup, syncing with iTunes, and the 'Encrypt iPhone backup' box was automatically unchecked.
5. I then chose the Restore iPhone option in iTunes as my phone was still hungup in the new setup/recovery mode.
6. Once the recovery started, I was given the option to once again use the same backup which was always there but labeled encrypted, but this time it wasn't encrypted and loaded without a hitch.
   

Sorry rbtwrld, I was a little skeptical at first but have first-hand experience it truly works and there is a bug that definitely needs to be fixed.

I was upgrading my iPhone's iOS, and the upgrade created a backup, but it was encrypted and I never set it to encrypt. I usually use the same "set" of passwords and numbers. I followed the suggestion to use Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker, and finally recovered the password.

• Downloaded EPPB and I ran it in trial mode (just continue without entering an activation code)
• Put all of my normal passwords in a text file
• Added that text file as a dictionary in EPPB by clicking the green plus, then the other green plus and finding the TXT file I created. I also chose to use maximal mutations for my text document (it capitalizes and combines words from the dictionary to try out variations of the passwords I gave it)
• WITHIN SECONDS!!! it told me the first two characters of the password, and showed 8 asterisks (so the total password length was 10 characters). I knew from those first 2 characters what the password was!
• Elcomsoft offered to show me the complete password if I bought a full license (~$80)
• Restore completed successfully.

Thank you Elcomsoft!

This was annoying the crap out of me when I was trying to set up my 5S and I found a way around it. I backed up old iPhone 5 one more time, but this time I unchecked the "Encrypt iPhone backup" option before doing so. Once the backup was complete, I set up my iPhone 5S from that version of my iPhone 5 backup.

The above will obviously not work if you're trying to restore your phone to a backup version from a previous date. Hope this helps.

Ok, I was shocked to see I had set a password to my backups and after trying dozens of possible passwords I realized that it was the password of the computer where I am, but not the latest updated password, one that I had set about 1 year ago... strange...

Either way: my recommendation is to try ALL passwords that you used before to access to your computer's session where your iTunes is installed in (mine was an iMac).

Good luck to all