Secure iCloud Keychain recovery
iCloud Keychain escrows users’ keychain data with Apple without allowing Apple to read the passwords and other data it contains. Even if the user has only a single device, keychain recovery provides a safety net against data loss. This is particularly important when Safari is used to generate random, strong passwords or passkeys for web accounts, because the only record of those passwords is in the keychain.
A cornerstone of keychain recovery is secondary authentication and a secure escrow service, created by Apple specifically to support this feature. The user’s keychain is encrypted using a strong passcode, and the escrow service provides a copy of the keychain only if a strict set of conditions are met.
Use of secondary authentication
There are several ways to establish a strong passcode:
If two-factor authentication is enabled for the user’s account, the device passcode is used to recover an escrowed keychain.
If two-factor authentication isn’t set up, the user is asked to create an iCloud security code by providing a six-digit passcode. Alternatively, without two-factor authentication, users can specify their own, longer code, or they can let their devices create a cryptographically random code that they can record and keep on their own.
Keychain escrow process
After the passcode is established, the keychain is escrowed with Apple. The iOS, iPadOS, or macOS device first exports a copy of the user’s keychain and then encrypts it wrapped with keys in an asymmetric keybag and places it in the user’s iCloud key-value storage area. The keybag is wrapped with the user’s iCloud security code and with the public key of the hardware security module (HSM) cluster that stores the escrow record. This becomes the user’s iCloud escrow record. For two-factor authentication accounts, the keychain is also stored in CloudKit and wrapped to intermediate keys that are recoverable only with the contents of the iCloud escrow record, thereby providing the same level of protection.
The contents of the escrow record also allow the recovering device to rejoin iCloud Keychain, proving to any existing devices that the recovering device successfully performed the escrow process and thus is authorized by the account’s owner.
Note: Besides establishing a security code, users must register a phone number for their iCloud account. This provides a secondary level of authentication during keychain recovery. The user receives an SMS message that must be replied to for the recovery to proceed.