I can't remember iPhone backup encrypted password on iTunes!

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Level 1

12 points

I can't remember iPhone backup encrypted password on iTunes!

I've seen plenty of posts on this topic, but perhaps not what I'm looking for.

I backed up an old iPhone on iTunes because I'm old-school and don't trust the cloud. I'll admit that I'm not good about backing up the phone and it had been 2 years since I had done it before (yikes).

I then went to the Apple store to get my new iPhone X. I traded in my old iPhone for credit. I told them that I had backed up my old phone on iTunes prior to coming into the store. So the salesperson then wiped my old phone clean before I left the store. Told me to just plug in my new iPhone X to iTunes when I got home. Fine. Easily understood as I've done it before.

However, when I got home, I was horrified to see that iTunes was asking for this encrypted password. I don't ever remember encrypting the backup or entering a password. I've looked on iTunes and can see that my wife had an encrypted password for her old phone from 3 years ago on the same computer. So perhaps the encrypted password is the same as what she had used? Unfortunately she can't really remember either.

I've read all the basic responses about how if you can't remember your encrypted password, there is nothing that can be done and you're basically screwed. I understand how to restore to factory settings, how to create a new backup of your old phone that is unencrypted, etc. My problem is that I now have my new iPhone X and my old phone was given back to Apple and was wiped clean. I have irreplaceable photos that I need to get and they're now locked into this iTunes encrypted backup. I've tried about 100 or so possible passwords but it's looking like a futile exercise.

I've been looking online, and it seems like there are a lot of third party password hackers for essentially this problem. It looks so easy to do. Does anybody have success with them? Are they safe? Or are they trojan horses for viruses? Do I have to worry that they will have access to everything on my computer while it runs? Any particular one that somebody can recommend if they've used one?

If I can get through this, I'm going to join the 21st century and start using the cloud...

Posted on Jun 10, 2019 8:45 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Scott_CB

Level 1

99 points

Jun 10, 2019 8:56 AM in response to greyhorse8

Hi there,

I'm afraid no third-party software will be able to bypass the encryption, so I am afraid to say they will just be fraudulent programs. I actually did this to myself the other day. I'm afraid if you can't remember the password to the encrypted back-up then all data from the backup will be lost.

Apple say this on their website: 'There is no way to recover your information or turn off Encrypt Backup if you lose or forget the password.'

In order to make a new backup of your device you will need to follow the instructions on this help page:

About encrypted backups in iTunes

I'm sorry this is probably not the answer you were looking for, I hope it helps!

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Answer 2

Jun 10, 2019 9:08 AM in response to greyhorse8

Do you use a Mac? If so, check your keychain as when you first set an iTunes backup password, your are prompted to save it to Keychain. You also have unlimited guesses at the password.

But it is indeed true that without the password, your data is lost to you. And no, cracking the password is neither simple nor easy unless someone uses a very simple password like “password”.

If you ever had a work email account on that device, that account’s security may have forced the use of the password (since your backup could contain company data). Sometimes, in that case, the initial password is that email account’s password.

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Answer 3

greyhorse8 Author

Level 1

12 points

Jun 10, 2019 9:21 AM in response to Michael Black

I believe I tried work email passwords but will keep trying.

Sad, so all of these adds for unlocking passwords and essentially using brute force character and number generators don't work? There seems to be a lot of people saying they were helpful (although of course it is on the company's website). I'm afraid to download something to my computer to try, but I'm desperate to recover these irreplaceable photos.

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Answer 4

Jun 10, 2019 10:11 AM in response to greyhorse8

There are also lots of sites with people who tried to crack their password and failed. Apple’s commitment to privacy is pretty clear on their web site, so they work hard to make such things very difficult to do. That’s why their own password manager, Keychain uses AES 256 bit encryption. That means to brute force access to someone’s MacOS Keychain would require testing 1.1x10^77 key combinations. The sun will be transforming to red giant and consuming the earth by the time the worlds fastest computer, on average, cracks that.

The reason some of those tools are lucky is because they don’t brute force - they try a much smaller set of common passwords or password patterns people use, and since many people use notoriously weak and often repeated or patterned passwords, when they run the software they can give it some guidance to get to a lucky guess. So people who make passwords always using combinations of their kids names and birthdates, for example, can provide inputs to the algorithm to greatly restrict the possible combinations of keys.

But if you use random and strong passwords, then all you can try is brute force, and then wait a few hundred thousand or millions of millennia to get there.

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I can't remember iPhone backup encrypted password on iTunes!

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