Level 1

28 points

iTunes asking for backup password???

I am upgrading my iphone 4 to iOS 5. I backed up my phone (via iTunes 10.5) and downloaded and installed iOS 5. I am now going through the setup process and it is at the "Restore from iTunes Backup" step. I connect to iTunes and iTunes is prompting me for a password to "unlock your iPhone backup file." No I did not encrypt the iPhone backup, nor is it or was it checked in iTunes. I have tried my iTunes password, my 4 digit unlock code for the iPhone, and several other passwords. When I did the backup an hour ago I was not asked for a password. I am at a loss as to what it is.

iPhone 4

Posted on Oct 12, 2011 1:11 PM

Top-ranking reply

Fredgallagher

Level 1

0 points

Posted on Jul 24, 2012 10:46 AM

Guys, here is our experience with this bug (and yes Apple this is a bad bug not a bad memory) and here is how we got around it.

My wife recently attempted to upgrade her iPhone to 5.1.1 and iTunes advised her that she would need to do a complete backup and restore process on her iPhone which she agreed to and let it start. So it did the backup, upgraded her iPhone and then when it attempted to restore the backup it halted and asked her for the password for her encrypted backup. As other folks have indicated, she hadn't requested this backup or any other backup in the past to be encrypted, but regardless we could not proceed beyond this point. We tried every combination of password she or I had ever used with no avail. We also spent hours with the Genius Bar folks and the online Apple support folks and received plenty of empathy but no results. You really are left with the impression that this is your fault and that somewhere in your dark past you or someone in your family encrypted a backup with a password.

So we went the Elcomsoft password breaker route which some folks here have used with success. i would like to share my experiences here because I feel I owe this forum a favour and also to make sure you know how to get this software to best work for you ,because even though its very powerful, its not totally intuitive.

First Attempt - We downloaded the Elcomsoft free trial version of the software, told it to run, asked it to go against our iPhone backup file, selected the most recent iPhone backup (btw this wasn't that days but instead was one from 2 weeks ago - another bug Apple) and told it to start. When it starts, it will tell you how long it expects to take and in this case it said 4 hours. As the Elcomsoft software is running it says what its "attack rate" is of approximately 700 password attempts per second and it displays its current attempt every second so you can see it work through the possibilities. In this case, under their "task" I had accepted the default "english dic - no mutations" So with this default it just attacked with standard unicase dictionary words and after about 2 hours it finished with no success.

Next Attempt - I wasn't suprised and decided to look deeper. If you double click on "english-dic" it will open a box showing your selection and displaying the mutations options "disabled". if you click that, you can see that you also have the options of minimal, average or maximal mutations. I chose "maximal" and it in turn advised me that it could take up to 4 days to run this attack! So I quickly backed off from that and chose "minimal" and it in turn advised me that it would take up to 30 hours to run this attack. I chose this solution, but before running it on my wife's backup, I ran it on my iPad's backup on a separate computer where I intentionally protected it with a password of "1234". Off it went, and you could see it apply different combinations of numbers, letters and special characters. In was kind of fun to see and in less than 2 minutes, it found the password and came back showing 12**. If you want to see the ** characters, you then need to buy the application at around $80 and get a registration key.

Successful attempt - So with that little success under my belt, I started the "minimal" attack on my wife's computer and her iPhone backup. And 25.5 hours (it said it took 91,871 seconds) later it was successful and showed the result as Pr*****. So at this stage, you could try variations of Pr and 5 characters, but since we had never encrypted our backup and also never used a password beginning with Pr, and because Elcomsoft was going to save us a lot of grief if we had to leave the iPhone at factory settings, we elected to register the software and proceed with payment. Success!! Her phone is now on 5.1.1, all her application data is in place and we have a happy household and I am a hero!

Learnings - #1 - Encrypt your iPhone/ iPad backup intentionally with a password you selected vs. letting some bug somewhere select it for you. #2 - Make sure all your important passwords such as your PC or MAC signon and your online banking software are secure and complex, because this type of software is very powerful and there are a lot of bad guys out there that will use it for the wrong reason. Elcomsoft has provisions to protect it from being used for the wrong purpose, but others might not. During those 25.5 hours, I estimate it attempted over 64 million attacks! #3 Elcomsoft is in Russia! So it will take a few hours to process your payment since they don't seem to work 24/7. So kinda of scary, but it worked.

Thanks

Fred

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423 replies

Mar 10, 2013 5:12 PM in response to wsucoug95

I tried every password possible and nothing worked! I thrn went and changed my laptop administrator password and used that and it worked! Hope this helps! good luck 🙂

Apr 7, 2013 10:46 AM in response to wsucoug95

yes. solved. password is you computer psw

Sep 8, 2013 4:01 PM in response to wsucoug95

I used my old "Apple ID" account password(s) and it worked !!!!!!!

Arcziiii

Level 1

0 points

Oct 9, 2013 11:43 AM in response to wsucoug95

I had same problem and I never set password for backup. My old (first) passcode worked for me happy#

Lu82

Level 1

4 points

May 26, 2014 7:06 AM in response to discobiscut

I was having the same problem, for me it was the microsoft exchange account password.

Sep 16, 2014 5:21 AM in response to wsucoug95

If you have a PC where you change your login password on a regular basis (as all good security minded people should) it will be one of your previous PC logins.

Simple

salvagil

Level 1

0 points

Nov 8, 2014 8:47 AM in response to wsucoug95

I could fix it by typing the password for my email account that I use as Apple ID (The Apple ID password and my email account password are different)

I hope this will also help you all

Good Luck

Jan 12, 2015 1:23 AM in response to PCKaz

I too suddenly encountered an encrypted iTunes backup. Tried every password I have for iTunes, Computer, etc etc, and then tried "password" and it worked. Hope this helps others.

Jan 17, 2016 2:09 PM in response to glinedesign

After hours of problems, this actually worked! I had a ! in my password, took it out and left everything else and it's now downloading the backup!?!?!

Oct 12, 2011 10:31 PM in response to calexn

Didn't work for me. So I kept trying more and more passwords.

Low and behold an old one worked that I didn't think I ever used on this computer. It's a new MacBook Air, so that suprises me. Not sure where it came from, but it did work.

So if you think you've tried all your passwords, you probably haven't. The one you think it won't be is probably it.

Music, videos and apps are not included in the backup. Those are just resynced from your library once the phone is reconnected to itunes after the restore. apps take a really long time to restore.

And the phone is not locked during the sync. So watch itunes status before disconnecting the phone or you will interupt it.

Oct 13, 2011 10:59 AM in response to wsucoug95

Same issue here. Updated to iOS 5 which bricked my iPhone. Tried to do a backup restore, but was prompted for a password. The password is not the itunes password. It is whatever was entered when you save a backup, and I had no idea! Fortunately, after several tries, I just happened to enter the itunes recognized name of my iphone. That worked; however, contacts are still missing.

calexn

Level 1

0 points

Oct 13, 2011 3:04 PM in response to wsucoug95

I managed to get the backup restored onto my iPhone after iOS 5 update. Nothing worked for me, no old password, not current and not the pin lock. So if you are in the same situation as me, and never took a backup of the iphone 4/s, and never set any passwords for your backups and now you have one thanks to itunes. you can do the following to get it all back.

I have a friend with another mac, I copied the backup that was taken just before the iOS5 update to their computert, and into the same itunes folder for backups.

made sure itunes is at the latest level. launch itunes, plug in iphone, and restore.... Done! No passwords, no questions, all my folders, accounts and settings are back as they were before the upgrade.

Oct 13, 2011 5:24 PM in response to wsucoug95

Just wanted to say my Uncle had this issue with his iphone after he tried to do the 5.0 update, he said he never even set a password on it but to restore the data it is asking for a password. After reading another members post I just told him to try 0000 and it worked!

Restored his contacts / mail / other settings. He just went to go celebrate!

My guess is the 5.0 version messed with the passwords and it may depends on other settings as to what one works for you, in other words I am sure 0000 wont work for everyone. I say that because lots of people are having this issue and some people are saying the password that worked is the same password as there computer, others are saying 1234 worked, others say 1111 worked, and a few other combonations. But 0000 is what worked for his iphone, and he did not have a password set prior, so if you did not set a password try 0000!

Good luck!.

-Mark

Oct 14, 2011 5:40 AM in response to kaiaruza

After trying every password and PIN I have ever used on my iPad as well as the PC I sync it to, letting elcomsoft brute force run for 12 hours on my 12proc machine, and reading the forums, I'm now thinking that the encrypted backup was enabled when I first sync'd my iPad to my company's exchange server for eMail. The exchange server does push the policy that a PIN must be set before sync will work so I can see where Apple's logic is that if the iPad is supposed to be secure then the backups must also be encrypted. Since elcomsoft tried every four number PIN combination and I know I only used four number PINs, I'm betting that like another poster above, iTunes used my original exchange password for the backup file.

Two problems with this: neither my iPad or iTunes let me know this was happening so I didn't have the opportunity to record the password I was using at the time and the iOS upgrade process should be smart enough to notice that encrypted backup is enabled and ask you for the password BEFORE the upgrade process starts and your device gets wiped.

Since my company requires a very strong password and since the password change policy is set to force me to change my password frequently and since I have had my iPad since April, there is practically no chance that I'll remember the strong password I had that far back. So, I am SOL and I give up. I'll just have to live with losing all my data.

Now I am focused on fixing this moving forward. Right now iTunes is still encrypting my backups and I cannot disable or reset the password since the old password is required for a reset.

Any ideas on how to reset the encrypted password? At this point totally wiping the device is fine with me :-(.

rsgl

Level 1

0 points

Oct 14, 2011 6:50 PM in response to marcelafrommontreal

if you ever set a password, try that again. in my case, it was the very first password I tried. according to the apple rep i spoke with today, there have been "server issues" that have caused correct passwords to be rejected and passwords to be required when none were set. this kinda' explains why my password worked today but didn't work the past two days....it also explains why some people were prompted for a password once but not on a later attempt.

i know it *****, but try the most likely passwords again. one of them will probably work now, even if it didn't the first, second, third, or twentieth time. it did for me...

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iTunes asking for backup password???