Safari 17.0 clear history command deletes passwords in keychains

Hello,

Since the Safari 17.0 update under Ventura 13.6, I notice a problem with the "Clear history" menu command. When clearing history with the "all history" option, Safari ask for a keychain password (I use several keychains other than the session one and which are locked by default).

Whether I enter the keychain password or not, Safari randomly deletes a web site password from one of the keychains each time the history is cleared.

Fortunately, since a similar problem with keychains encountered under Catalina (Passwords in Keychain Keep Getting Deleted - Apple Community resolved by Apple since) I systematically make copies of my keychains.

Moving keychains to a subfolder also prevents them from being modified by Safari.

The problem occurs on my two different machines.

The Safari 17.0 update appears to be causing the issue although it was followed immediately by the 13.6 security update. Perhaps should it be looked around also ?

Is anyone else experiencing the same problem ?

Notes:

MacOS Ventura 13.6
MacBook Pro (MacBookPro13 2018 Thunderbolt 3) & MacBook Air (M1, 2020)
Safari Version 17.0
iCloud *not* used to sync the keychain

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 13.6

Posted on Oct 13, 2023 1:12 PM

Top-ranking reply

moi160 Author

Level 1

69 points

Posted on Nov 7, 2023 12:31 AM

Hello Tristan_R

I opened an Apple security research report (number OE1924096249891) but no help was given by Apple:

1st answer: "This doesn't seem to happen on the latest version of macOS Sonoma 14.1 so far. If this is happening with you, could you please show the keychain in Keychain Access to contextualize the data deleted there?"

2nd answer: "Please let us know. If you are able to reproduce this problem in the future, please let us know."

As requested by Apple, I made screen recordings showing clearly that each time the history was cleared in Safari, a new website password (secure notes and application passwords are not affected) was deleted in a seemingly random order.

No help has been forthcoming from Apple. I too have updated to Ventura 13.6.1 with Safari 17.1 to no avail. Then it occurred to me to download Ventura from the AppStore and reinstall it. I then noticed on my M1 processor Mac that the Safari version supplied was no longer 17.1 but 16.6. Curiously, the same procedure on an Intel processor installs Safari 17.1. But in both cases, after this "offline" reinstallation of the system, the password deletion problem stopped.

Have you tried reinstalling Ventura from the AppStore archive?

Alain

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Safari 17.0 clear history command deletes passwords in keychains

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