Recovering saved passwords from iTunes backup?

[bmac89]

Hello,

I was having some problems with text messages not forwarding to my iPad and in the process of trying to fix the issue I signed out of iCloud on my iPad and signed back in. Unfortunately that has caused my entire saved passwords (keychain) to be wiped from my iPad. This is many many hundreds of passwords and email aliases.

I believe iCloud keychain was switched off but when I signed back in it was automatically switched on but the passwords were gone. I have switched it back off but it made no difference.

I do have iCloud backups but the encrypted ones are old so I don’t want to restore my iPad. I suspect the following is highly unlikely, but is there any way to extract or transfer just the keychain from an encrypted iTunes backup. I realise that if this is possible it would require third party software.

I have the archived backups, so I suppose I could make another iTunes backup of the current state, then restore the old encrypted backup, access the saved passwords and record them manually then restore the new backup and manually add the passwords but not only is this going to be extremely time consuming, I am also not ready to update to iPadOS 15 yet. I posted this here because it is not specific to a particular version of iPadOS and there is not a general iPadOS forum.

P.S. It seems I may have deleted the archived backups. I will keep searching but it looks like I only have unencrypted backups so I’m stuffed!

Any help would be very much appreciated. Many Thanks!

 

[NoBoMac]

You can backup the device and then try to restore the unencrypted backup, as long as it came from same iPad. That might recover some of your passwords.

And then if so, make sure iCloud Keychain is on. Restore the encrypted backup, and you should/might have old setup with passwords from iCloud.

 

[bmac89]

You can backup the device and then try to restore the unencrypted backup, as long as it came from same iPad. That might recover some of your passwords.

And then if so, make sure iCloud Keychain is on. Restore the encrypted backup, and you should/might have old setup with passwords from iCloud.

Thanks for the reply. I was under the impression that an iTunes backup did not backup keychain/saved passwords unless the backup was encrypted or am I missing something?

Also if this method was to work I would need to make sure that I do a brand new backup so that I don’t backup the current password-less state over the old backup.

Even if the passwords are old and out of date at least I have a full list of usernames/emails attached to the accounts. For some websites I used alias emails to prevent spam, so without the saved password list it makes it very hard to reset passwords for many websites.

Thanks again.

 

[NoBoMac]

I was under the impression that an iTunes backup did not backup keychain/saved passwords unless the backup was encrypted or am I missing something?

The password database does get backed up, but it's encrypted to the device ID/key, making it restorable only to the device it came from.

If the backup is encrypted, then it can restore to any device, as long as you know the backup encryption key.

From the Apple Security white paper:

Other keychain classes have a “This device only” counterpart, which is always protected with the UID when being copied from the device during a backup, rendering it useless
if restored to a different device.

 

[bmac89]

The password database does get backed up, but it's encrypted to the device ID/key, making it restorable only to the device it came from.

If the backup is encrypted, then it can restore to any device, as long as you know the backup encryption key.

From the Apple Security white paper:

Thankyou. This is such a relief to know.

So I should be able to complete the process without updating the iPadOS?
Of course I will make another backup first but is there any special procedure I need to take to avoid the OS being updated in the process? I.e. Can I simply do a normal restore through itunes? Do I need to erase content & settings first?

Many Thanks for your help - very much appreciated!