iTunes asking for backup password???

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

To elaborate on pjlove's post, it was actually my computer's password that I had used when setting up my previous phone. You will need to use your computer's old password if you changed your password since then. I'm fairly certain this is the case since I've never used my computer's previous password for any of my Apple accounts. In short, use the same password you used to lock your computer whenever you initially set up your previous phone with i-Tunes.

I'm having the same issue on a PC here. But I think I may have solved it.

Like most here, I never set a password for my backups previously, so this caught me really off-guard. Also ****** me off b/c I'm going on a trip tomorrow morning and wanted my phone fully updated and functioning before I left. I tried my current Itunes password, didn't work, I tried my four-digit code I use as a locking code for the phone. I tried 1234 mentioned above, none work.

However, on a whim, I then took the # out of my itunes password (a p/w that, on its own, may have also been a previous itunes account password for me) and tried that and it worked. The restore is currently in progress so we'll see how it goes from here.

So a suggestion, try all your previous itunes account passwords. And if your current one has a pound sign (or any other special characters), take it out and try that.

Good luck.

Guys try typing in the password of your laptop/desktop.... I know this sounds strange but it i had the same problems and thought why not try the machine password and this works.

I have retested this with my bros iphone with ios5 and it seemed to work then!

However it needs to be the password of the machine (laptop/desktop) the phone was originally sync'd or connected with

(i noticed this as when i tried using my laptop's psw it didnt work but my desktop psw DID and i remembered i first connected my phone to that!)

Hope this helps

I had the same issue. Strange enough, after disconnecting my IPhone and re-connect; I got a question about restore from backup or create new. After trying several password which did not work, I clicked 'Cancel' and then the restore from backup started automatically! It is now in the middle of the progress and looks fine

During my update to iOS5 I was asked for the password to my encrypted backup, and my iTunes password didn't work. My phone password didn't work. My previous passwords to these things didn't work, and I tried every variation of password that I could have used...and none of them worked.

So then I unplugged my iPhone, and plugged it back in, then hit the "Check for Updates" and "Restore" buttons on the iPhone screen in iTunes. And it began to restore the back up. Hitting "Check for Updates" did nothing...but I included it here to document everything that I did.

I notice in the Backup section of the Devices->iPhone screen in iTunes that 'Encrypt iPhone backup' is not checked....so I suspect that value from the check box might be getting incorrectly passed to the update, so it brings up the password entry dialog box, when it isn't needed.

I was stressed for hours that this might have wiped my phone, so I hope that this helps someone else.

iPhone 3GS, previously at iOS 4.3.5

iTunes updated as of yesterday

Windows 7 x64 updated as of yesterday

And PS:. Go Cougs!

In my case, the password turned out to be a numeric code I defined when I set up the Microsoft Exchange account on the phone. When I set up this account, my phone asked me to define a numeric password. This password is not linked to anything else. It is numeric and must have at least 4 characters. My guess is that those people who are miraculously finding that 12345 is their password happened to have used that generic number sequence when they originally set up the Microsoft Exchange account on their phone.

I was having the same problem. Could not figure it out. None of the usual passwords worked and I had no iPhone backup in the Keychain. I finally remembered that I had previously synced the phone with a different computer. I logged in to that computer and checked the Keychain Access. Lo and behold, there were two iPhone backup entries and one of them had a password that worked to unlock the backup!

This seems like a bug. I'd be curious to know whether others who have solved this problem also backed up their phones on more than one computer.

Anyway, it's working now. Hope this is helpful to someone.

I experienced this problem but have resolved it now (at least it seems to be progressing fine now).

I had previously set my backups to be encrypted. No idea when/how long ago. Fortunately I had the password in my passwords file. When I entered the password into the screen, itunes said the password was wrong, which is a bug!

I called apple support and they helped me out. Here are some things to try to solve you problem:

1. unplug all usb crapola except for the iphone from your computer

2. do not use a USB hub

3. try picking some other backup from the dropdown, hopefully one that is not encrypted

4. check in itunes > edit > prefs > backups and note if the available backups have a padlock icon (indicates which ones are encrypted or not)

5. try unplugging your iphone and restarting your itunes and then restart the restore process

Don't know if this helps but I've tried loads of solutions and even with a custom password list the elcomsoft couldn't find any results. Some people have noted that it uses a random password frm passwords you've stored on your device so try your facebook password, email account, lock code etc. None worked for me.

After a few days of scouring forums I had to do it a convoluted way in the end.

I installed iFunbox and copied the keychain-2.db file to my PC after making a backup of it in the same directory on the iPhone (var/keychains)

I then deleted the file from my iPhone and reconnected it to iTunes. This meant all passwords had been deleted (albeit temporarily from my iPhone). I then selected the encrypted backup option again and started a backup then cancelled it which created a new keychain-2.db file in var/keychains. I then removed the encrypt option. This asked me for a password but it was set to the new password I'd just entered so the tick was then removed.

I then exported and opened the new keychain-2.db file in exported in sqllite browser (do a search and download it, it's free). I then opened my original file in sqllite browser. The reason I did it this way is because for some reason my keychain files displayed a load of gobble-di-gook in sqllite browser so I couldn't determine what was the itunes password. Maybe because I'm running iTunes 10.5 but people have previously stated that the files are shown in plain English but mine weren't.

I then compared the genp tables in sqllite browser until I found the record that had the same set of symbols in the acct column that as in the new keychain-2.db file I'd created as this would be the iTunes password I'd just created. No other records existed in the new keychain file.

I then deleted that record in sqllite browser, saved and imported back into var/keychains using iFunbox.

The encrypted option is no longer ticked and I can make unencrypted backups. I will definitely not be ticking that box again!!!

I know it sounds really long and laborious but if you follow it step by step it isn't as long as you think. I've no previous experience of this and I found all thge info from scouring various forums and piecing it all together to create my own solution. Also, if you're lucky enough to have your keychains file display as plain English in sqllite browser then you can just delete the record that says it is your itunes backup password.

Hope it makes sense. It really does work!

At the end I have managed to make the iphone to update and continue working normally.

The solution has been to upgrade itunes, after that I entered the password of the computer where the backup was done and it passed successfully. I tried with that password lots of times before without success.

But there has been more than a month of trying to find the password, and even the password crackers told me that the backups haven´t a password...

So there is a problem with the iphones backups, not with the users...

Good luck,

Rafael

After an update of my iPhone 4 iTunes asked me to enter a password! I also never set up a password for backups. I spent 6 hours on trying the trick mentioned above. I also tried the elcomsoft password breaker metioned above. But thank you for your contributions here, it helped! I tried even the access password from my bank account app (Sparkasse App - German Bank). I am sure I never used this password before for anything. This password was dedicated for my bank app. iTunes took this password to encrypt my backups. I can't believe it!

But I am so happy. Thank you for giving me the hint to enter all passwords I ever used for my iPhone. Even that one for my bank app. I would never except that.

My password was my iCloud password. With capitals, numbers, and specials.

It sounds like most of you did not intend to encrypt their backup. I did. I saved the password to my OSX keychain in case I forgot it. That key was lost (how, I don't know), but I remembered the password. It was wrong. I tried nearly all of your suggestions (except olcomsoft, because I only have a Mac). Olcomsoft did point me in the right direction though, saying that the password authentication is on the iDevice, and not through iTunes (as I would have guessed). Try passwords your iDevice knows.

In case it matters, my iCloud Apple ID and iTunes ID are different

I found this thread through a google search and i'd like to chime in. I backed up my iPad locally and enabled the encryption check box which did not prompt me to create a password (and i didn't notice the change password button). I was stumped when trying to restore the iPad when asked for a password that did not match my iPad's pw or my iTunes acct pw.

SOLUTION: For me, on a PC, the password was my Windows user login password. I DO NOT, and HAVE NEVER used this password on anything other than my laptop's login screen. So ymmv but that was the solution for me. Best of luck and hopefully this helps someone also.

IT'S YOUR COMPUTER'S PASSWORD, I tried everything else, my iphone passcode, my apple password, none worked except for my computer's password if it doesn't work, unplug the iphone and plug it back in and put the computer's password it will work...