Q: Lost Password to iPhone Backup

Lawrence Finch wrote:

 

The serious flaw in your argument is that Apple and iTunes has no way of knowing what your Windows password from your laptop was. Windows does not store passwords in cleartext. When you enter it Windows enciphers the entered password immediately, then compares the enciphered password that you entered with the enciphered password stored on your computer. Windows uses a strong one-way cipher, meaning there is no way to determine the original password from the enciphered version. There is no place on your computer that Apple could have found that password.

I thought about that, and wondered if perhaps the program can store the enciphered password, ready to compare later. Remember that this could be happening on a server that sets the policy, not necessarily the laptop itself.

It might also be that this user's company, IT sets the initial password, and maybe even enters it into the MDM's password policy thingy when they first set the user's account up.

Either of these scenarios are out of both the user and Apple's control, which is why I suggested that the program should confirm that the user knows the password before doing the backup.

TJBUSMC1973 wrote:

 

 

No, there's a serious flaw in your recollection of the events.  iTunes does not encrypt your backups unless you ask it to do so.  And when you ask it to do so, it prompts you to create a password.  That's it.  There's no magic involved. 

This appears not to be correct for some users. It appears that a password policy can be applied by the company, for example via an MDM. For some users, the first time they ever try to do a backup, the password option is ticked and greyed out. They can't untick it, and don't know what password it's going to use.

In this case, it's also possible that the user did install and use iTunes once before, but has forgotten. But installing iTunes isn't a trivial task, given the huge download size, so I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

pshute wrote:

 

Lawrence Finch wrote:

 

The serious flaw in your argument is that Apple and iTunes has no way of knowing what your Windows password from your laptop was. Windows does not store passwords in cleartext. When you enter it Windows enciphers the entered password immediately, then compares the enciphered password that you entered with the enciphered password stored on your computer. Windows uses a strong one-way cipher, meaning there is no way to determine the original password from the enciphered version. There is no place on your computer that Apple could have found that password.

I thought about that, and wondered if perhaps the program can store the enciphered password, ready to compare later. Remember that this could be happening on a server that sets the policy, not necessarily the laptop itself.

 

It might also be that this user's company, IT sets the initial password, and maybe even enters it into the MDM's password policy thingy when they first set the user's account up.

 

Either of these scenarios are out of both the user and Apple's control, which is why I suggested that the program should confirm that the user knows the password before doing the backup.

If the phone was issued by the company, or if a corporate MS Exchange account was added to the phone during the time that was the laptop's password then the MS Exchange administrator could have set an encryption policy and set the password to the current domain password. The way to find out is to ask the IT department (although a lot of IT departments are clueless about how enterprise iPhone management actually works). Once an encryption password is set it is never changed, unless you explicitly change it. And to change it you need to know the current password. When you DO change it a new backup is created with the new password. Note that it isn't just a password; it is the encryption key for the backup.

jacinta0720 wrote:

 

I just put iTunes on this laptop last week.

 

If it had asked me to confirm a password I wouldn't have used a password from a year ago.  I would have used a current password that I remember.  The only reason I came across the password that worked is because I kept reading about "original" passwords.

 

Like I said, I haven't used that password in months since I'm required to change my password every 2 months.

If you go into iTunes now and start the backup process, does it let you untick the password option? Or is it greyed out?

Lawrence Finch wrote:

 

If the phone was issued by the company, or if a corporate MS Exchange account was added to the phone during the time that was the laptop's password then the MS Exchange administrator could have set an encryption policy and set the password to the current domain password. The way to find out is to ask the IT department (although a lot of IT departments are clueless about how enterprise iPhone management actually works). Once an encryption password is set it is never changed, unless you explicitly change it. And to change it you need to know the current password. When you DO change it a new backup is created with the new password. Note that it isn't just a password; it is the encryption key for the backup.

It this user came to my company's IT Dept (i.e. me) and asked that question, they'd be told we don't know. I suspect our MDM has a password policy as a default, i.e. it's got a policy but we didn't set it. I haven't managed to find where it's setting it yet.

One of the items in the list suggested here worked for me worked for me:

iOS: Troubleshooting encrypted backups - Apple Support

I wish unplugging and replugging worked.  I've done that repeatedly and nothing!  I just got a new iPhone 6 two days ago and have been trying to transfer data from the backup of my old phone, but because I don't know the password I can't do it.  I called Apple and they had me transfer the data from the cloud, guess what, the encryption transferred as well!!!  I am about 99% certain this sucker is going back to the store and will be exchanged for an Android.  Between issues with my new MacBook and the new iPhone I have probably spend 10 hours on the phone with Apple over a 2 day period. 

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

For me restoring directly didn't work. Since I had the device for the old backup I plugged it in and hit the "change password" button for the backup.

As dumb as it looks like, after a few of THE SAME tries I did with the "restore" button, I was able to use an old iTunes password as the "old password" and setup a new one. Disconnected from USB, connected the new device and Restore worked flawlessly.

I really think I never setup a password and something went wrong during restore that with the original device and the old password it worked.

Go figure?

Got a new iPhone 6 Plus. iTunes backup was done for my older iPhone 5s.

iPhone 5s SIM card moved to 6+. Plugged 6+ into Mac.

Tried to use 5s backup for 6+.

iTunes rejected all password attempts, including my Mac password which I KNEW was correct for the backup.

I relaunched iTunes, put SIM BACK into 5s, plugged 5S back into Mac and tried [ALMOST] all passwords again.

Finally I revisited this discussion and saw "leabe18" suggest using my computer password--which I DID when the 6+ had the 5s SIM card.

That reminded me to try my computer password AGAIN for the backup now that the 5s was plugged in and using the its own SIM card.

IT WORKED...FINALLY. And it backed up the 5s ALL OVER AGAIN. (I didn't tell it to do another backup.) After that, I was able to "restore" the 6s from the NOW UNENCRYPTED 5s backup. Never again!!!

And strangely, somewhere along the way, the 6s picked up the name of my iPhone 5s!  Probably when I first tried to restore the 5s backup to the 6+, even though it didn't go because of the rejected passwords.

Just More and more and more APPLE BUGS..

Well I'll save you horror story and just cut to the chase.

After wasting days trying to get help from Apple, Genius Bar, AT&T and anyone else I stumbled upon this bright young man on youtube with a 2 min video who simply said:

JUST USE YOUr ITUNES PASSWORD, BUT IN LOWERCASE, and thank God, it worked!!!

Give it a try.

Which means that when you were prompted for a backup password some time in the distant past you entered your iTunes Password, but in lowercase.

Not necessarily. As I posted I tried my standard password many times, in addition to everything else under the sun. Only when I upgraded my iOS and told it I trusted my computer did it somehow magically work. Something very weird is going on with this password storage.

I just restored my backup from an iphone 4s into an iphone 6 in a new windows PC. I had the same problem 1 year ago when trying to restore my iphone 4s after a failure when updating to iOS 7 in my old PC. Since I use a Windows PC, in fact the itunes backup password was the same than the Windows login password of my old PC (I never entered any password when backing up in iTunes!). Now in this second Itunes backup and restore in a new PC, the same password used 1 year ago in the old backup was valid. Hence the backup password is set in your iphone the first time you do a backup via Itunes, and is kept unchanged, despite synchronizing with Itunes in different computers.

rnores wrote:

Hence the backup password is set in your iphone the first time you do a backup via Itunes, and is kept unchanged, despite synchronizing with Itunes in different computers.

Correct. It is the first password you entered when prompted for a backup password. And you MUST have entered it, because your Windows password is not stored anywhere on your computer (an irreversible encrypted hash of it is stored), so there is no way that iTunes could have known it when you created that backup long ago.