Q: Lost Password to iPhone Backup

YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH I THANK YOU FOR THIS IDEA, I THOUGHT I HAD LOST EVERYTHING AND AFTER TRYING FOR ALMOST 2 HOURS YOU HAVE GIVEN ME THE ANSWER, WORKED PERFECTLY, FELL LIKE I WANNA KISS YOU XD XD

This is clearly a flaw - a well documented flaw (does Lawrence Finch work for Apple?). The truly amazing thing that is evident from this thread alone is that the problem has been getting attention (complaints) for three years or more and Apple support still pretends to be surprised by the existence of it.

The loss of encrypted data as result of failure to produce a password = normal (never mind that the interface used to create the password is so cryptic that it regularly goes unnoticed)

The inability to to reset a password and make use of basic functions of the device and desktop software, thus rendering the ability to actually manage my data (data that I have full access to) = a flaw, bug, pain in the ***, etc....

Lawrence - why do you defend such poor work?

This just happened for me when backing up an iPhone 5 and trying to restore on an iPhone 6.  I never set a password on my backup, but it had one anyway.  It ended up being my AppleID / iTunes password but all lowercase.  I saw that trick in this thread somewhere.  That worked for me.

I just upgraded from a 5 to a 6 Plus. Went to restore my backup to the new phone only to find my backup had been encrypted which I will emphatically say that I DID NOT DO. This would not have been a problem if I still had access to my 5, but I did a trade in when I picked up the new phone.  I called the mobility folks on my company's IT team, who insisted that they didn't force encrypted backups on my profile. After stumbling across this thread I tried everything in it, including launching a couple of password crackers, but as they plugged away for days trying brute force and dictionary attempts, I kept plugging away with every known password I could think of that I'd ever used.

What ended up working for me was trying an OLD work password which did the trick. Turns out the old admins had pushed out a profile that included encrypted backups before the current admins took over and deployed a MDM solution. Note it was the password as originally set, not all lowercase. Also, it was not my first password, or my most recent. It was one set in between (we change them every 90 days), I'm assuming from whenever the admins pushed out that profile (without my knowledge, a heads up would have been nice and saved me the headaches).

Good luck to all -- and don't give up, one way or another you can find a way back to your data!

I also ran into this issue today upgrading to the 6. Never set an encrypted password for back up. Tried to restore today and got the password prompt.

Did a google search and found this thread.

What worked for me is using the very first password I had when I set up itunes. Took me a while to remember it, but it resolved the issue for me.

Good luck!

Thanks Nana911911 the passcode worked a treat! It was just starting to drive me crazy.

For some reason mine was 123456 WTH but hey it worked

my email password worked ...........don't remember when i set it up though !

I have found this issue as well when trying to restore my iPhone 5 to my iPhone 6. People keep saying that we must have set this password but in some cases you may have but I did not. I think when Apple did an IOS update they enabled this feature by default took the current passcode you were using at the time and set it as the default password. If after this date you changed your passcode (as I had to due to one of my apps making me change it) then it did not update the backup password accordingly. This is why this solution works for some people and not others. The date at which this change came in would appear to be around July 2013 so if you can remember the passcode back then you may be able to restore from the encrypted backup. This is a seemly small change but it has caused major issues for a lot of users and it should least of been some flagged warning of this change, if not acknowledged as a main feature of the update.

Had this same issue.  Evidently, there is no prompt to create a password for each backup.  After racking my brain for possible passwords, finally landed on one I must have used the first time I did a backup, and it worked.  My best guess is that you are prompted once the first time you use that device for a password for a backup, and that password sticks for subsequent backups.  Apple could do a better job at either telling you the first time that this password is really quite important, you should write it down, or else just prompt you for a new password every time you do a backup.  Sadly, this problem is a box canyon: no way out but to remember the password you used.  There doesn't appear to be a multiple attempt lockout, so you can keep hammering away.  I think this is a design flaw - there ought to be a way to recover any lost password.

It is your computer password u use to login to your user.

If did not setup a password for your backup but you do have your company exchange email account setup in your iphone it will auto generate the need for password when you restore it. The password in itunes to unlock the restore is the same password you use for your Mac OS admin to install new software on your mac. Try it and smile no hacking needed

Diego Duarte Moreira wrote:

 

If did not setup a password for your backup but you do have your company exchange email account setup in your iphone it will auto generate the need for password when you restore it. The password in itunes to unlock the restore is the same password you use for your Mac OS admin to install new software on your mac. Try it and smile no hacking needed

I didn't set a password, and I've got an Exchange email account. I don't have Mac OS, I have Windows. My Windows password doesn't work, the admin password doesn't work. Your advice might work for you, but it's not a universal answer.

My iTunes wants to set this unknown password on all new backups, so there's no point doing backups any more.

I suspect in my case the password is set by some other system policy.

pshute wrote:

 

Diego Duarte Moreira wrote:

 

If did not setup a password for your backup but you do have your company exchange email account setup in your iphone it will auto generate the need for password when you restore it. The password in itunes to unlock the restore is the same password you use for your Mac OS admin to install new software on your mac. Try it and smile no hacking needed

I didn't set a password, and I've got an Exchange email account. I don't have Mac OS, I have Windows. My Windows password doesn't work, the admin password doesn't work. Your advice might work for you, but it's not a universal answer.

 

My iTunes wants to set this unknown password on all new backups, so there's no point doing backups any more.

 

I suspect in my case the password is set by some other system policy.

By coincidence, I've just had to restore a backup of my iPad because the iOS8.1 upgrade failed. I had noticed that when it did the backup before the upgrade, the password box was ticked, but was greyed out so it couldn't be unticked. It didn't ask me for a password, but required one to restore from the backup.

I tried my iCloud password (among others) when it prompted for the password when I tried to restore, and was surprised to see that it worked.

There must be a policy somewhere in our system that automatically uses the device owner's iCloud password as the backup password. This explains why I've been unable to restore backups I've made of other people's devices. And why a test backup of a brand new phone, not yet given to a user, didn't have the password box ticked.

There appears to be a lot more to this password problem than you'd think. People unable to recall their backup password may have simply entered it and forgotten it, or may have had the system enter one without them knowing, and it may have grabbed that password from a variety of places. And if the restore is attempted a long time after the backup, the password the system automatically entered might no longer be one in use by the user.

I think Apple needs to display explicit warnings at this stage of the process. If it's going to use your iCloud password, your admin password, etc, it should clearly tell you which one it used so you can make a note of what it was at the time.

It should clearly warn people who enter a password for themselves that they need to keep a record of it.

So I have just had this issue. I had to factory reset my wife's IPhone 5S to fix a problem.

I connected to ITunes on my PC, authorized her ITunes store, created a backup after ticking Encrypt and entering her CURRENT ITunes password (twice) then proceeded to factory reset then phone..

After the phone was reset I connected to ITunes to restore the phone, only to be told that the password (I had just set up 5 minutes ago) was wrong.???

24 hours of frustration, finding this post, trying all of the suggestions, finally remembering what the VERY FIRST ITUNES PASSWORD SHE HAD EVER USED WAS, and this allowed the restore.

Apple, how can this happen? (Yes I know Apple don't monitor this thread but I feel better having vented.)

This very nearly caused a divorce, given that of course my wife could no longer remember her Hotmail or Facebook passwords, and it was all my fault. :-)