Lost Password to iPhone Backup

I'm happy you solved it, however:

I guess iCloud pushed that password (created years ago) into the cloud and then passed that down to my new Mac when I backed my phone up. As soon as I punched that in it worked. Hope that helps some folks.

is technologically impossible. iCloud does not know what your iCloud password is, so it can't push it anywhere. No responsible business stores passwords; they store enciphered (actually, hashed) versions of the password, that cannot be reverse engineered to find out what the password is. Have you noticed that if you forget a password for a site the site does not tell you what your password is? Instead, they provide a link to create a new one, because they don't know your password. This can't be done for a backup password, because the encryption key exists only in the backup and the phone, so there is no way to reset it without knowing what the current one is.

The ONLY way a backup password can be created is if you or someone who is backing up your phone entered it, twice, the first time an encrypted backup was made. The reason the password will move from one computer to another is because it is saved in the phone, so every backup made of the phone once one encrypted backup has been created will have the same encryption key, which is derived from the password.

Lawrence Finch seems to spend an awful lot of time using pseudo technical language to scare off normal users in this thread. It is absolutely false that passwords are stored in unrecoverable ways on macOS.

Lets look at several ways the system might use a password that was not explicitly entered and verified:

1. Keychains stores passwords (and other sensitive data) in an encrypted format but those passwords can be retrieved at any time by unlocking the keychain store. This is exactly what happens when password autocomplete is done in Safari, or when prompted to add or remove custom certificates, for example. In those cases the user need not know the password being retrieved from the keychain store, but just the password encrypting the keychain itself, then the passwords can be retrieved in plain text and used to fill out a form.

2. There are other parts of macOS that use passwords setup for the initial user account. The Login keychain uses the passwords setup for the initial user. This is a process that could be done separately on setting up the machine but, instead, the user account password is used to simplify things and avoid having to enter 20 passwords on setup.

3. With iCloud account login, the iCloud password is used automatically as the login password. Prior to iCloud account login on initial setup, users would enter any local password, that step is now optional and the password used for the iCloud password you login to on setup is used as the default password for the user. This confused the **** out of me the first time I setup a machine with iCloud login and was not explicitly asked for a password. Not saying it is bad, just something to be aware of. Just because iCloud doesn't know your password server side doesn't mean the machine didn't store the password, which is demonstrably visible in the login keychain.

Looking through most of these comments it seems fairly likely that something like #3/#2 is or was happening with these backups. iTunes is probably using the logged in account password as a default for encrypted backups to save a step for users, assuming that they use one password across their Apple devices.

There's an interesting article on a change in iOS 11 to allow resetting of the password without providing the original password (so long as the phone is unlocked). Could this have been made to mitigate some of the issues from this thread?

Ko0Ps wrote:

I Just Had This Problem Turns Out That Password Is Your Computer Password You Use to Log In To Your Computer

That’s because it was the password that you entered twice when you made the first encrypted backup. Look near the top of this page to see some passwords that other users entered the first time they made an encrypted backup.

Sorry, but no one can help you with that. Read the thread. There have been tons and tons of suggestions about how to determine what that password might be. If you can't remember it, you can't use the backup.

Do you have a backup to iCloud? If so, use that:

Transfer content from your previous iOS device to your new iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch - Apple Support

GB

You have 70 pages of help on this forum with several recommendations about passwords you can try. Unless you can figure out what the password is, you won't be able to use the backup. Do you have an iCloud backup of your device? If so, use that instead.

GB

I am no expert in such situations, and that is why I have spent the last 5 hours trying to find out how to restore my backup with a password I either didn't create or I forgot... still, I tried all the possible passwords I am using and have used in the past but with no success. The only backup available from iTunes WITHOUT a password was one from 2016, so all of the new data, pictures, messages of the past 2 years where gone.

I went through all of your posts, YouTube channels, etc, trying to figure out what to do and finally decided (by some strange faith) to check Keychain Access, and there I found the password I have apparently used for a backup made back in 2016 - I don't even remember creating one, but I did and it worked finally!

Now, I am not sure why Apple is not suggesting among all of the options it offers to also check Keychain where you might find your forgotten passwords? Instead you are warned that "There is no way to recover your information or turn off Encrypt Backup if you lose or forget the password." !!?

Perhaps Apple has this information somewhere, hope I just missed it? But if it really is not there, then Apple, PLEASE do include all the possible options/suggestions available, this was a very time consuming and irritating experience, and by what I read below here, I can see I was not the only one finding it hard to find my way around... Thank you.

Dear All

These are all the possible solutions i found and tried. Something worked for me and I am sure if you don't give up, I am sure something will work for you too.

• Your Apple ID password
• Your system password
• Your iphone/ipad/ipod password
• Please try all of your Apple ID/Mac/System/device passwords you have ever kept (this worked for me)
• 1234/0000

That was PASSWORD FROM MY MACBOOK!

I had the same issue and I ended up putting the password from my new phone and it worked. Very bizarre

Try password, just happened to me and this worked!!! yay

Hey there,

Usually the password that apple requires for the backup is the security passcode that you have set on your lock screen

mvyiu88 wrote:

to anyone whos using windows, its actually asking for the password for your MS id/windows password

No it is not, unless that is the password that you entered when you created the first encrypted backup. Here is a list of the passwords that different users in this thread have reported to be the "correct" password:

• First iTunes account password (40 different users)
• Old iTunes account password, but not the oldest one
• Password used for almost all accounts (3 different users)
• All digit Password created a long time ago
• Computer/laptop login password (4 users)
• Laptop password (2 users)
• Computer password (4 users)
• Email password (3 users)
• iTunes with no capital letters
• Password not used anywhere else
• All numeric used in the past
• Password for old gaming site
• PC password (5 users)
• “iphonelogin”
• work computer password
• Current app store password (2 users)
• Paypal account password
• iPad unlock passcode
• Strongest variation of the base password I have ever used
• Old password
• Old work password
• Macbook password (2 users)
• Restriction passcode
• Gmail password (2 users)
• Current Apple ID password (2 users)
• Apple MobileMe password
• Apple ID password, but all lower case (8 users)
• Apple ID password, first one ever used, but all lower case (2 users)
• iPhone passcode when corporate profile was installed
• Passcode for a website
• iPhone screen unlock passcode (9 users)
• iPhone unlock passcode at the time the first backup was made (3 users)
• First password for work computer
• Old password used over 2 years ago (2 users)
• Previous owner’s iTunes password
• Current laptop password
• Wireless network password
• Electric bill and Skype password
• icloud password, all lower case
• Windows login for very old laptop
• iMac password (3 users)
• First iPhone 4 digit passcode
• iTunes password from last year
• 4 year old password
• iTunes password (current) (3 users)
• Old PC password
• Password for “Good” application
• Password used for everything+1234
• 1234 (4 users)
• 12345 (2 users)
• 0000
• Password I use for everything else (2 users)
• One of my husband’s passwords
• Some old non-Apple product password
• Screen passcode of the first iPhone that was backed up (2 users)
• Old password with different case on first letter
• “password”
• Windows Administrator password (2 users)
• Original Windows Administrator password
• Mackbook administrator password
• “iphone”+4 digit unlock code
• Voicemail password
• asd
• “herpderp”
• “darwin” (first name from credit card account)
• First name, all lower case
• Ms Exchange account password
• Facebook password
• Browser password
• Network admin password

There is one way that Encrypt Backup can be checked without you doing it - if you have a company MS Exchange account on your phone the account administrator can install a security profile that requires encrypted backups. But you still would be prompted for a password.

The backup password is whatever the person put in at the time they set up an encrypted backup. It could be a passcode that they used to use or currently use for their Lock Screen. It could be a whole list of things as Lawrence Finch has provided in this thread.

GB

New passwords are never created to protect an initial backup copy, unless you click the "Change password" link. If you do you are prompted for the old and new password. If that case YOU create the new backup password, just like YOU created the old backup password.