Hi,
Every time Catalina starts after booting, this message concerning my personal keychains (not system or session) pops up :
If i click the CANCEL button, all passwords that are not private notes are deleted from the keychain. The message pops up as many times as items in the keychain. Keychain files are altered, impossible to retrieve lost entries.
Does any one encounter the same problem ?
MacBook Pro 13”, macOS 10.15
Indeed, since the Catalina 10.15.4 update, the attack of the keychains by the Reminders application seems to have stopped. This is excellent news even if it is advisable to remain cautious because unfortunately neither the problem nor its solution have been officially recognized by Apple.
Indeed, since the Catalina 10.15.4 update, the attack of the keychains by the Reminders application seems to have stopped. This is excellent news even if it is advisable to remain cautious because unfortunately neither the problem nor its solution have been officially recognized by Apple.
I have a similar problem with keychain. On iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013). I have upgraded the OS to Catalina. The upgrade went well, no error message/alerts.
After a couple of days, I opened keychain to retrieve an account login & password. It was missing. I noticed others. I HAD many internet accounts, manually entered in keychain. Out of 388 items in keychain -- 108 items were gone. I used Time Machine to restore my keychain from 1 day prior to the installation of Catalina and added it to my keychain as a secondary (not default) keychain. All my keychain items were there (much to my relief). However, after logging out of the iMac and back and immediately opening keychain, I literally witnessed the same items disappearing as the remaining items scrolled up to replace the records as they were being deleted.
Because I have not yet found useful information regarding this issue, I began eliminating possibilities. I unchecked "Keychain" from Apple ID (formerly iCloud) in System Preferences, replaced the semi-destroyed keychain with a copy, logged out and back in -- same result 108 items disappear.
Only once during several similar efforts, did I get a "Reminder" message similar to the one "moi160" described in which the secondary (good) Keychain was referenced and which I captured the following screenshot:
This has only appear once during my trials. Coincidence?
There appears to be a greater problem with Keychain for those "rare"? users who actually use Keychain to manage their internet urls, account names, and passwords. MY records seem to have taken a backseat to (background) system calls attempting to manage my internet security (which I appreciate). However, PAY ATTENTION APPLE -- this is going to be a problem as users realize their essential user data is being wiped out of Keychain.
I am especially grateful for the Time Machine backup of my keychain. TM is CURRENTLY my salvation. Under no circumstance, should a user's data be deleted from Keychain without user confirmation. At minimum, a choice to export the user's data to a deprecated keychain should be implemented.
Sorry, I'm not knowledgeable enough to know how to resolve this issue. I also failed to identify this problem as a Beta tester of Catalina. Now I can't go back, Time Machine has been Catalina-ized to the dual "Macintosh HD" plus "Macintosh HD - Data" volumes. (Apple developers: you know what I'm talking about.)
I called yesterday Apple support ... After more than an hour spent with useless operations such as resetting PRAM , session keychain or AppleID, an adviser and a supervisor without any competence on the problem the answer was that it is undoubtedly a bug to go back to the engineers !!! Well done, and that time wasted to reach this conclusion. Obviously no temporary solution was offered to me. Thank you Apple!
Thanks a lot Padna for your long and precise answer. I agree and share all you said.
Here is my conclusions from the tests i performed at this time :
Reminders application displays the keychain access message at login and erases all items that are not secure notes from any personal keychain referenced in keychain application.
- The message pops-up as many times as there are elements to delete.
- Erasure takes place whether or not you enter the requested password.
- This happens although the keychain application is not synchronized with iCloud.
- This happens even if reminders are out of sync with iCloud.
- This happens even if the iCloud account is deactivated.
- This happens even without internet connection.
- This happens even with no access permissions to the keychain file.
- This occurs regardless of the location of the keychain file.
- This occurs on all my computers since the installation of Catalina 10.15.2 from Mojave 10.14.6
- It has never happened before.
The only workaround I have found so far is to systematically add and remove the keychain file reference after consulting a password and making a copy of the original file, taking care to verify that no entry is deleted without my knowledge
Erasing secure and protected data by an unauthorized application is a very serious problem and it is imperative that Apple resolve this quickly. This problem is more than a security breach, it is a system attack that erases sensitive user data in violation of data protection laws. Unheard of with Apple!
Catalina 10.15.3 has just been released but does not fix the bug.
Despite many discussions on the forums dealing with this problem, Apple remains deaf.
I contacted Apple support and opened a complaint file;
I contacted Apple product security and provided the information;
I contacted Apple Feedback assistant and opened a comment;
What else can i do?
I have received no response from Apple, not even information that the problem is under investigation. It is serious, very serious, not to be able to guarantee the security of personal data and worse to seem to ignore it!
APPLE DO YOU HEAR THIS?
Something is different now in beta 1 version 10.15.4.
I conducted a small test to manually add url, user-name, and password in Keychain.
The url for the test was https://icloud.com
After including user-name and password to test, I exited Keychain, logged out; logged in again. The Keychain item remained, unlike previous versions of Catalina. Also, performed a system Restart with same result: Keychain test item remained intact.
Note:
I use a virtual machine of Catalina for testing. The VM has been upgraded through all beta and final releases of Catalina. No passwords are stored in Safari and no extensions applied to Safari.
My production iMac which is still at version 10.15.3 consistently removes manually-added Keychain items after logout/login. This removal behavior affected items added prior to upgrade to Catalina and any subsequently added items.
Currently,
As a work-around, I must refer to a backed up keychain (prior to Catalina) and/or store retrieved passwords in Safari. (which I do not prefer.)
The automatic removal of Keychain items in Catalina is extremely shocking to anyone depending on Keychain for password management, yet I've heard scant mention of this issue. I hope my encouraging test results continue to be the resolved conclusion in the final release of 10.15.4.
Thank you padna for this message of hope. So we will be looking forward to the 10.15.4 update.
It would nevertheless be useful if Appe would like to communicate officially on the resolution of the problem.
Today, Mar.24, 2020, Catalina 10.15.4 release is available for update.
I have added old Keychain items (from a backed-up Keychain) to the current Keychain in Catalina 10.15.4. Then, to test, quit Keychain, logged out and logged back in to view the "new" additions to Keychain successfully. New, manually added items remain in Keychain as expected.
All is well again (though I remain circumspect while sanguine).
Reminders deletes personal keychains
