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Copying login keychains between Macs fails on Secure Enclave Macs with Tahoe

27 points zdw 18 hours ago 13 comments

shenenee 1 hour ago | parent

This is pretty much how it's suppose to work...

Retr0id 58 minutes ago | parent

I'm more interested by the fact that it apparently didn't work this way before Tahoe.

pram 52 minutes ago | parent

IIRC there are options for exportable and un-exportable private keys when you make one in the secure enclave. Going to guess Tahoe made them un-exportable by default.

winstonwinston 56 minutes ago | parent

Maybe but this is unexpected if you need to restore from a backup..

__MatrixMan__ 34 minutes ago | parent

Don't backup keys, rotate them.

gavinsyancey 16 minutes ago | parent

I can't rotate my keys if I lose access to accounts because my computer died and my backup is useless.

petronic 33 minutes ago | parent

I've done Tahoe-to-Tahoe migration assistant moves between machines in recent months. No issues with login keychain migration.

winstonwinston 20 minutes ago | parent

But that’s not backup restore? I’m thinking Time Machine restore on a new Mac when old one is no longer working. Or when the old one had to be wiped and restored.

ryandrake 10 minutes ago | parent

It's unexpected to anyone with intuition about how a computer traditionally is supposed to work. As a general principle, as a user, I expect a file on one computer to be usable on another computer. Or, at the very least, if I need to obtain some other thing from the original computer to "unlock" that file, I should be able to do it. The idea of a file that is only usable on a particular computer feels weird.

cute_boi 30 minutes ago | parent

This is good.

dfabulich 24 minutes ago | parent

Does the macoOS login keychain get backed up by Time Machine backups in a way that could restore the keychain if the original machine's Secure Enclave is lost or destroyed?

flyingshelf 13 minutes ago | parent

And yet if you click export it will gladly print out a plaintext csv with your whole life in passwords. Doesn't even attempt to zip it with password or something.

ImPostingOnHN 11 minutes ago | parent

that seems reasonable, as it is the lowest common denominator for interoperability

what would be unfortunate is if it was in some format that couldn't be used by most other systems without extra work, and if the user wasn't able to use their own property to export their own passwords in a different format.