password to unlock your iphone backup file

No, you and like two other people don't. Everyone else that has posted here believes this person including me. You guys keep arrogantly regurgitating the same canned replies. When its 3 vs 100+, it's time to realize that maybe something else is going on. I'm not sure your ego's will allow that to happen though.

Apparently, logical thought is a foreign concept to you.

You turned on encryption. A password is required. You had to set one. The fact that you now insist you did not is proof that you don't remember it.

Your refusal to accept this will not alter reality in any way.

We are telling you that WE NEVER SET ENCRYPTION. EVER. I'm not sure what is so hard to understand? I never encrypted my backup. I have been backing up apple products for almost 10 years. Not once did I ever have to put in a encrypted password until I tried to restore a backup I made to a new iPhone 7 from a iPhone 6 five minutes earlier. And guess what? Even if I did accidentally encrypt that backup for the 6, I would have never used that password, because I haven't used it in 8 years. There has to be a glitch to where it encrypts a backup and picks your original itunes account password. That is what people, including me, are saying we had to use to unlock the backup. Yet you guys have your fingers in your ears screaming "we are right, you are stupid, blah blah blah". You guys are acting like we don't remember what we did literally minutes before. News flash. We do.

So, in your exalted opinion, itunes never screws up.

In fact, no software in history has ever screwed up.

Windows has been, is and always will be perfect.

makes one wonder why people are paid 6 figures and up to fix faulty programs if they never screw up.

I guess your iphone has never, ever just up and rebooted itself ever, because it also is perfect.

Your perception of reality is truly faulty

I never contradicted myself. I said I never intentionally entered a password. I did say I may have entered a blank one.

Others are saying they never selected encryption and never entered a password.

Even though you weren't there, never saw their screens, you're calling them liars for all intents and purposes, insisting that itunes could never glitch.

EVERYTHING glitches

T19BF wrote:

Why do you believe so firmly that the dialog must always appear.

Many years of experience training people how to use technology makes me believe that firmly.

A very large number of end user problems with technology are because people didn't pay attention to what was on the screen. I know I've done it enough times myself.

T19BF wrote:

Why do you believe so firmly that the dialog must always appear.

Are glitches impossible?

In addition to the responses you have received already, I work in cybersecurity. I know a lot about passcodes and how they are used. I know that passcodes are never stored in apps in "plaintext" - they are always hashed or enciphered using a non-reversible algorithm. When you enter the passcode, it is hashed using the same algorithm, and the two hashed values are compared to determine if the passcode was entered correctly. As the passcode itself does not exist anywhere in the app or system (iTunes, Windows, Mac OS, etc) there is no way that iTunes could use any passcode as the backup passcode. By eliminating that possibility, the only way it could have gotten into iTunes is if someone entered it.

In addition to passcodes on your computer, some users have reported that when they found the passcode it was their iPhone or iPad screen unlock passcode. These exist in one place only - on the iPhone or iPad. They are not stored anywhere on any computer, not stored on any Apple server, or anywhere else other than on the iPhone or iPad. That's why the FBI had to spend almost $1 million to hack one device. Because the passcode was not stored anywhere but on the device itself, and entering an invalid passcode 10 times would have erased the device.

T19BF wrote:

So, in your exalted opinion, itunes never screws up.

In fact, no software in history has ever screwed up.

Wind

No in my exalted opinion as a cybersecurity specialist I know that even if iTunes screwed up it could not possibly have created an iTunes backup using a passcode that you know. It could in theory create a random passcode, but there are hundreds of examples from people who finally guessed the passcode, and it was always one that they had used currently or in the past. See my other post for more details.

EVERYTHING glitches

Except YOU.

Nobody has been called a liar. Nobody has insisted iTunes doesn't glitch.

We have consistently asked those who disbelieve to read the conversation more thoroughly. Find the replies from those who eventually figure out which password THEY originally entered and then used to decrypt their encrypted iTunes backup.

Never claimed that, claimed just the opposite said I didn't intentionally enter a password, but may have entered a blank one.

I, personally, have never insisted I didn't enter some sort of password.

Other's have and I'm not going to categorically claim that they absolutely had to

I have seen software behave in so many bizarre ways, I'm not going to rule out anything

Now, could anyone suggest a solution to a blank password.

T19BF wrote:

Never claimed that, claimed just the opposite said I didn't intentionally enter a password, but may have entered a blank one.

The dialog box will not accept a blank password. Something had to be entered.

Ok... but I am not locked out of a backup, and you are. You need help and advice, and I don't.

Your outrage at my opinion does not alter that reality.

You have asked for help and have blankly refused all offers. You have accused those here, with a firm grasp of technology, of refusing to accept your version of events. You have, presumably, read through this conversation to see that others have ultimately found the password they used to encrypt their backup and yet refused to accept this may be happening to you. You have seen numerous mea culpa's.

So be it.

You can continue to come here, asking for solutions to impossible situations. Your choice.

If you did indeed enter a blank password. Twice. And you have tried entering a blank password now. It would seem there is no solution to this never-before-heard-of and quite-unlikely-to have-happened glitch. As has been explained, the "password" you enter is used as part of a formula by iTunes and macOS, to encrypt the data.

How could a no data/blank password be used to encrypt?

Ha, I am proven correct, I did not enter a password, EVER!

Feel BETTER?

So, it was never about getting help. It was about being right.

People are so quick to jump to conclusions

You don't even realize how wrong this is. Our conclusion was correct. A password was entered. That actually makes "us" right"

You went from no password, to possibly a blank one to "my kid did it".

Well done. You're clean on this one.

T19BF wrote:

Ha, I am proven correct, I did not enter a password, EVER!

My kid did, when they used the phone.

People are so quick to jump to conclusions

So, yes, a password was entered. There was no blank password entered. There was no magic encryption without a password. The system worked exactly as it was supposed to, exactly the way we said it did.

Not exactly, people INSISTED that "I" absolutely entered a password, no matter how many times I said I didn't.

Never once did anyone bother to inquire whether somebody else may have owned the phone before