Lost Keychain Password
in [Mac Systems]
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From: John Varela on 8 Mar 2010 20:14 A friend has forgotten the password to his keychain. Is there any back door to recover it? He's running 10.4.11 in an Intel iMac. While I have your attention: This was out of town and I had brought my new netbook with me and wanted to get on our host's wi-fi network. I went into his network preferences and looked at his Airport password, and it was $ followed by 30 or more hex digits. I'd never seen anything like that. (This was the same 10.4.11 Intel iMac.) Explanation? He said the Comcast installer had set him up with that password. My netbook running Win 7 wouldn't accept hex so I was out of luck, even if I could have copied that many characters correctly. -- John Varela
From: David Empson on 9 Mar 2010 03:03 John Varela <newlamps(a)verizon.net> wrote: > A friend has forgotten the password to his keychain. Is there any > back door to recover it? He's running 10.4.11 in an Intel iMac. No. The entire point of the keychain is that it is a secure means of storing passwords, protected by the keychain password (which is used indirectly to encrypt the keychain contents). If you lose the keychain password, you lose the ability to access anything stored in the keychain. Your friend's best solution is to try guessing it. If necessary, keep a copy of the .keychain file somewhere else and start a fresh one in its place (with a known password), and try to open the old one from time to time if another idea occurs as to the password which might have been used. > While I have your attention: This was out of town and I had brought > my new netbook with me and wanted to get on our host's wi-fi > network. I went into his network preferences and looked at his > Airport password, and it was $ followed by 30 or more hex digits. > I'd never seen anything like that. (This was the same 10.4.11 Intel > iMac.) Probably a hex-encoded WPA/WPA2 key. I've never bothered with one as the human-readable passphrase has almost always worked. Hex keys are more commonly encountered with WEP (26 hex digits is common) due to lack of a standard for how to convert between human-readable passwords and encoded WEP keys. > Explanation? He said the Comcast installer had set him up > with that password. My netbook running Win 7 wouldn't accept hex so > I was out of luck, even if I could have copied that many characters > correctly. You may have just needed to work out what notation it required to let you enter a hex key. I've never done that with Windows, but a prefix of 0x seems the most likely starting point. -- David Empson dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz
From: John Varela on 9 Mar 2010 12:22 On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 08:03:37 UTC, dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz (David Empson) wrote: > Your friend's best solution is to try guessing it. Oh, we did that, all right... > If necessary, keep a > copy of the .keychain file somewhere else and start a fresh one in its > place (with a known password), and try to open the old one from time to > time if another idea occurs as to the password which might have been > used. This is not an emergency, just a nuisance. Safari asks him for his keychain password from time to time; of course he clicks cancel and goes on. He didn't even know what the keychain is until I got involved. So he can continue as he is, though it would drive me crazy if it happened to me. Keychain Access in 10.6 wants an Administrator password. If there's a separate keychain password, I can't recall ever having been asked for it and I don't know what it is. -- John Varela
From: John Varela on 9 Mar 2010 12:24 On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 03:08:42 UTC, Michelle Steiner <michelle(a)michelle.org> wrote: > In article <dxizd0mOwXzR-pn2-mD88Fbb0ZM6I(a)localhost>, > "John Varela" <newlamps(a)verizon.net> wrote: > > > While I have your attention: This was out of town and I had brought my > > new netbook with me and wanted to get on our host's wi-fi network. I > > went into his network preferences and looked at his Airport password, > > and it was $ followed by 30 or more hex digits. I'd never seen anything > > like that. (This was the same 10.4.11 Intel iMac.) Explanation? He said > > the Comcast installer had set him up with that password > > Sounds like Comcast was using WEP instead of WPA. Either the installer > didn't know what he was doing, or the router they provided can't handle > WPA. It has nothing to do with the Mac; it's all about the router. No, it definitely was WPA and the password was very long. WEP is only something like 26 hex digits, isn't it? -- John Varela
From: Malcolm on 9 Mar 2010 13:48
On 2010-03-09 12:22:23 -0500, John Varela said: > On Tue, 9 Mar 2010 08:03:37 UTC, dempson(a)actrix.gen.nz (David > Empson) wrote: > >> Your friend's best solution is to try guessing it. > > Oh, we did that, all right... > >> If necessary, keep a >> copy of the .keychain file somewhere else and start a fresh one in its >> place (with a known password), and try to open the old one from time to >> time if another idea occurs as to the password which might have been >> used. > > This is not an emergency, just a nuisance. Safari asks him for his > keychain password from time to time; of course he clicks cancel and > goes on. He didn't even know what the keychain is until I got > involved. So he can continue as he is, though it would drive me > crazy if it happened to me. > > Keychain Access in 10.6 wants an Administrator password. If there's > a separate keychain password, I can't recall ever having been asked > for it and I don't know what it is. If you didn't do anything special, the keychain password should be the same as the login password for the account. If you check all the boxes in Keychain Access' "First Aid" preference, it should stop asking for the password. |