{"id":53395,"date":"2026-10-01T15:53:55","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T19:53:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=53395"},"modified":"2026-10-01T15:53:55","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T19:53:55","slug":"accessing-the-keychain-without-the-password","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/10\/01\/accessing-the-keychain-without-the-password\/","title":{"rendered":"Accessing the Keychain Without the Password"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/boberito.medium.com\/the-keychain-cve-where-every-key-fits-055f377618be\">Bob Gendler<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/boberito.medium.com\/the-keychain-cve-where-every-key-fits-055f377618be\">\n<p>Since macOS 26.4, there&rsquo;s been an issue with the keychain hiding in plain sight and that issue is it&rsquo;ll take <strong>ANY<\/strong> password. Say what? The story behind CVE-2026&#x2013;43728.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Where this is a bit more of a kicker&#8230;you can reset the keychain password without even knowing the real one.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Now did Apple fully fix it, well mostly. Something is different after macOS 26.4 (I believe it&rsquo;s the new, User Authentication Daemon &mdash; userauthd). On macOS 26.3, if you ran <strong>security lock-keychain<\/strong> and then <strong>security unlock-keychain<\/strong> it HAD to be your keychain password. But now they added this note to the man page.<\/p><blockquote><p>Unlocking the login keychain might succeed when an incorrect password is presented, if other unlock factors are available.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/24\/locked-down-passkey-and-keychain-backups\/\">Locked Down Passkey and Keychain Backups<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/28\/macos-26-6\/\">macOS 26.6<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/25\/macos-26-4\/\">macOS 26.4<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bob Gendler: Since macOS 26.4, there&rsquo;s been an issue with the keychain hiding in plain sight and that issue is it&rsquo;ll take ANY password. Say what? The story behind CVE-2026&#x2013;43728. [&#8230;] Where this is a bit more of a kicker&#8230;you can reset the keychain password without even knowing the real one. [&#8230;] Now did Apple [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2026-10-01T19:53:59Z","apple_news_api_id":"816258c6-590b-4e6f-9bef-27b29a7c3781","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2026-10-01T19:53:59Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAD\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/w==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AgWJYxlkLTm-b7yeymnw3gQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[131,1583,30,2742,2976],"class_list":["post-53395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-bug","tag-keychain","tag-mac","tag-macos-tahoe-26","tag-securiy"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53395"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53395\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53396,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53395\/revisions\/53396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}