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User profile for user: SiHancox
SiHancox Author
User level: Level 5
4,953 points

Duplicate iMessage Encryption/Signing Keys in Keychain

Has anyone noticed this unusual behaviour, I'm seeing multiple iMessage Encryption/Signing Keys for Public and Private. Appears each time I restart or login one extra of each is generated - if I delete all, when first restarting two of each appear, thereafter its back to one of each again.


Would have thought if new Keys are generated on restart then old should be removed automatically, but mine seem to be "multiplying" and if left unchecked take over Keychains.


I have always used Keychains to store Secure Notes so this unusual behaviour is very noticeable and wonder if anyone else has seen this and more importantly how it's resolved.

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10.4), 3.1 GHz i7, 500 GB Flash Storage

Posted on Nov 26, 2015 7:42 AM

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31 replies
User profile for user: elf55
elf55
User level: Level 1
28 points

May 26, 2016 1:21 PM in response to fssbob

I think I'm missing something in this thread. How is a few hundred keys in Keychain a "problem". Is iMessage of FaceTime slow to initiate? I work with systems that store thousands of keys for various reasons and it's normal behavior for a modern crypto system. Agreed, I am curious as to why iMessage generates them, but I can think of several valid reasons that it would. Has anyone tried deleting a key and then checking all their old iMessages to ensure that they are all readable? Does each conversation thread generate a new key pair? Nothing wrong with that if you want to be secure. 500 keys amounts to 10K Bytes. Not going flood anyones disk.

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User profile for user: fssbob
fssbob
User level: Level 1
9 points

May 27, 2016 11:59 AM in response to elf55

Well:

  • If nothing else it's a pain to scroll through hundreds of entries in Keychain Access. No other entries there behave similarly.
  • The entries appear to be unnecessary (iMessage works fine with just the original four).
  • This behavior didn't occur in Yosemite. In Yosemite, four entries were created, and after that they didn't proliferate with every restart.
  • A process that creates new entries on restart that are never cleaned up would be an awful design. Apple developers are smarter than that; thus, this is almost certainly a bug.
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User profile for user: SiHancox
SiHancox Author
User level: Level 5
4,953 points

Dec 24, 2016 7:38 AM in response to tjk

Sorry, should have posted sooner, it appears to be sorted on my system now - all I done was updated to Sierra when it was first available, which might not help those that either can't and do not want to move from Yosemite.


The update process seemed to resolve two aspects, I no longer get any duplicate keys and for the first time ever Continuity/HandOff now works across all my devices following a reboot or re-loggin. Previously if I rebooted the iMac (for example to update the system) to get Continuity working again I would need to sign out/in to iCloud, sometimes on all the devices - basically had me dreading Apple updates!


Can't really help any further, all the time I was running Yosemite I had an Open Case with Apple through their Bug Reporting System, never got any feed back on whether they had discovered why it was happening, in the end and following Sierra I closed the case out myself.

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User profile for user: SiHancox
SiHancox Author
User level: Level 5
4,953 points

Dec 24, 2016 8:10 AM in response to OregonRebel

Again, sorry for late response - iMessage is the Apple text message system used across all of their devices and links into the normal text message system. The App is also on the Mac and through the use of Continuity you can text via your Computer - the same message then appears on all your linked devices, likewise for incoming messages.


I always believed that the iMessage keys formed part of the encryption process for the system but not sure when they get generated or even if you need to use iMessage to actually trigger them - I've always had four keys, that is until the issue started (under El Capitan) when a reboot or re-loggin would produced four extra, these keys could soon mount up if your Mac is continually restarted - as you have found.


As replied to tjk, it was the update to Sierra that appears to have resolved it for me.

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User profile for user: SiHancox
SiHancox Author
User level: Level 5
4,953 points

Dec 25, 2016 12:35 AM in response to tjk

The only other thought is to try reinstalling El Capitan again over the top of your existing, not sure on the exact process (but think it's possible to do so and retain your data), but may be the final version might just correct what is going wrong in a similar way to installing Sierra for me.


Made mistake in last post, it was going from Yosemite to El Capitan when I first noticed the issues, end releases of Yosemite were very good (almost as good as Snow Leopard) and sometimes I wished I had not upgraded to El Capitan, which always felt "buggy" to me. The upgrade to Sierra (done with every finger crossed) has worked out great - the system now seems as good as it was under Yosemite.


I am now just trusting that Apple will not mess up during any future point updates (this has become a new concern for me) and to try and protect myself I do now leave the update a little later until I can read that no major issues exist - thankfully 10.12.1 and now 10.12.2 have been fine.


If reapplying El Capitan does not fix all you can do to limit "Key" production is to try and "sleep" the computer as much as possible, it was the restarts/logins that increased them for me.

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User profile for user: tjk
tjk
User level: Level 9
51,126 points

Dec 25, 2016 10:19 AM in response to SiHancox

Have already tried the reinstall and update to 10.11.6, no luck.


SiHancox wrote:


I am now just trusting that Apple will not mess up during any future point updates (this has become a new concern for me) and to try and protect myself I do now leave the update a little later until I can read that no major issues exist - thankfully 10.12.1 and now 10.12.2 have been fine.


That's what I always do, which is why I'm just now getting to El Capitan. 😉


Just remember to back up, especially right before an update, I use both Time Machine and CarbonCopyCloner so I can just clone back to my MBP if I want to, takes less than an hour and I'm back up and running, or Time Machine so I can restore from it.


Anyway, thanks for getting back to me again. 🙂

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User profile for user: Lau Chan
Lau Chan
User level: Level 1
139 points

Dec 28, 2016 2:28 PM in response to elf55

It is a problem, because I do NOT use any of those Apple iCloud Services (on this Mac Pro) at all. But I do use Keychain Access. I just want it to behave normal. At this state I am doubtfull wheter this System Software is stable enough to store my sensitive data in the long run. A Database that produces errors is not in my liking. ... and that is a problem!

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Duplicate iMessage Encryption/Signing Keys in Keychain

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