iOS Restrictions Passcode Finder

Pinfinder is a small application for Mac, Windows and Linux which attempts to to find the restrictions passcode for an iOS device (iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch) by brute force examination of its iTunes backup, without needing to jailbreak the device.

It was written after the PIN was forgotten for a kid's iPod Touch and wiping it would of been more work than writing this little program.

NOTE: This program will not help you unlock a locked device - It can only help recover the restrictions passcode as found in Settings -> General -> Restrictions. More information about Restrictions can be found at Apple's web site.

This blog post (which I didn't write, but inspired this program) mentions pinfinder and contains comments from many people who have used pinfinder successfully.

The program is free to download, use and redistribute (see the license file).

Download

Binaries for Linux, Mac and Windows can be found at the latest releases page.

Instructions

Operating-specific instructions are below. In most cases, simply running the program (working around OS specific security restrictions) should deliver the right result. Take a look at the Troubleshooting section if you run into issues.

By default, it will print out the passcode for all devices it can find an unencrypted backup for, displaying the most recently backed up first.

NOTE: The "Encrypt local backup" option must be disabled in iTunes for your device so that pinfinder can read the file that contains the passcode. You'll see a "backup is encrypted" message in pinfinder if it's on.

Windows

Backup the device using iTunes on a desktop or laptop computer. NOTE: The "encrypt backup" option must be disabled in iTunes.
Download pinfinder from the latest releases page.
Select "Open" when prompted by the web browser
Drag pinfinder from the .zip file to the Desktop

For Windows XP/Vista

Double click the pinfinder icon to run the program.

For Windows 7, 8 or 10

Right-click on the start button, and select Command Prompt
Drag the pinfinder icon from the Desktop to the command prompt window, and press return to run it.

click here for full size version of above image

Mac

Backup the device using iTunes on a desktop or laptop computer. NOTE: The "encrypt backup" option must be disabled in iTunes.
Download pinfinder from the latest releases page.
Select the tar.gz file in the download list to open it.
Right-click on pinfinder and select Open With -> Terminal - You will receive a warning about the program being written by an unknown developer, which you'll need to accept to use it.

click here for full size version of above image

Linux

Download, extract and run the binary.

$ ./pinfinder
PIN Finder 1.3.0
http://github.com/gwatts/pinfinder

IOS DEVICE                                BACKUP TIME                RESTRICTIONS PASSCODE
John Doe’s iPad Mini                      Nov 25, 2015 01:39 PM PST  1234
John Doe's iPhone 6                       Nov 25, 2015 12:15 PM PST  3456
John Doe's iPhone 5S                      Sep 19, 2014 03:57 PM PDT  No passcode found

Troubleshooting

By default the program will look for the restrictions passcode for every device that has been backed up, and return results of the most recently backed up first.

You can also specify the backup directory explicitly on the command line to examine the backup for a single device:

On Mac it will be in the home directory as /Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup/ eg.

/Users/johndoe/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup/51957b68226dbc9f59cb5797532afd906ba0a1f8

On Windows Vista or later it will be something like:

\Users\John Doe\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\MobileSync\Backup

Use whatever directory is the latest as the argument to pinfinder:

$ pinfinder /Users/johndoe/Library/Application\ Support/MobileSync/Backup/51957b68226dbc9f59cb5797532afd906ba0a1f8

The program will find the plist containing the hashed version of the passcode and will then find the passcode that matches that hash (which can then be used with your device). It shouldn't take more than a few seconds to run.

If the program fails to find the passcode for your device, and you're sure it's searching the right backup, please open an issue and copy and paste the text the program prints in the issue so I can help.

Compiling this program

If you don't want to use one of the pre-compiled binaries you can compile it yourself.

Download and install Go - Be sure to follow the instructions to setup a workspace and set a GOPATH environment variable to suit
run go get github.com/gwatts/pinfinder

If you just want to compile the program as quick as possible, install Go from the web site above, and run the following steps to build and install it to ~/pinfinder/bin/pinfinder

cd ~
mkdir ~/pinfinder
cd pinfinder
mkdir src bin pkg
export GOPATH=~/pinfinder
go get github.com/gwatts/pinfinder
bin/pinfinder

Other resources

Inspired with thanks by information found here:

https://nbalkota.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/recover-your-forgotten-ios-7-restrictions-pin-code/

Other Notes

Last tested with iOS 8 through 10.0.2 on OS X 10.10, 10.11, Windows XP and Windows 8 with iTunes 12.5

Ehliman / pinfinder