breaking into a Mac?

[cellio]

Dear brain trust,

My father had a laptop, an old MacBook. My mother would like to know what's on it. It's password-protected. I've been unable to guess the password, even knowing some of his other passwords and some patterns he used.

I have the passwords to his two desktop computers (iMacs), but also can't get in via network share (access denied). I have his cell phone, which should let me get into his iCloud account (that's the second factor). I have the impression that none of that will help.

Is there any way I can override the laptop's password and get in anyway? Or connect an external drive and make a copy somehow? I'm willing to take the laptop and a copy of the death certificate to an Apple store, except that I don't know if it's technically possible to get in (without damaging the contents, which is the whole point of the operation). I mean, we'd all like security to actually be secure, so this shouldn't be easy, but is there something between "easy" and "impossible" that I can try?

The laptop is at my mom's house, so I can't test things immediately, but I'm looking for any clues that could help on my next visit.

Comments

[fauxklore]

This may be helpful:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/102673

[cellio]

Ooh, thanks! This gives me things to try.

[cyndin]

Is it possible he backed up his data either to the cloud or to a local disc via Apple Time Machine? Getting into either of those may not be possible either but at least a cloud account might do password-forget and verify via text or email.

And what a good (and sad) reminder to share your passwords with trusted people who can access them after your death. Or at least to share the stuff you don't mind your family to see...

[siderea]

My information is potentially very out of date, so take this with a grain of salt:

Macs have two different levels of security available to them, which amount to whether or not disc encryption (FileVault) is turned on.

If it is turned on, I have no idea how to cope with that and you may be out of luck.

But if it isn't, there's two options I know about.

This may still work:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QkBRwv9pvtc If you have two Macs, you can mount one on the other as an external hard drive by booting it up while holding down the T key. And, of course, wiring them together. This at least used to make an end run around boot up authentication.

The other is to literally pull the drive out of the machine, if necessary pop it into some sort of external hard drive enclosure, and then mount that on another Mac.

I have no idea what Macs are using for internal hard drives these days, so you may need a little additional hardware. My household has a variety of "Mount internal hard drives as external hard drives" equipment we have sourced from various places like Amazon and the trash.

[cellio]

I've now gotten into his iCloud account. I see backups of files I saw on his iMac, but nothing that stands out yet as being from a different machine. On the other hand, I haven't done a direct comparison; next time I'm there I will compare what I see in iCloud to what I see on the iMac and go from there.

Good idea to look for a Time Machine backup! I saw one for the desktop computer but didn't check the laptop.

Next challenge: figuring out how to dump the entire contents of his iCloud drive to disk (specifically an external drive that I will plug in for the purpose). iCloud seems to have two modes: download individual file, and "restore". I don't want to overwrite anything; I want to make a copy.

Indeed, this is a sad and important reminder. Dani and I have had some conversations about this and need to figure out what we're comfortable sharing with each other. Maybe being able to unlock each others' phones is a good start.

[cellio]

Thank you. I suspect he didn't have FileVault turned on -- at least I saw no signs of it on the iMac, and since he didn't take the laptop out and about, he probably didn't have more security on it than on his main machine. (It'd be different if he thought there was a theft risk.) There are three Macs in his house (that laptop, his iMac, and an older iMac that is still on his desk), so connecting the laptop to another Mac seems easy. I'll take a network cable with me on my next visit.

fauxklore's link suggests I might be able to use his iCloud credentials to reset the password, so that's the first thing to try. Deploying a second Mac is plan B. Thanks again!

Edit: oh, a Thuderbolt cable, not Ethernet. Hmm, that's trickier, but he also has a lot of hardware and cables and stuff on his desk...

[cyndin]

You can take a "new" phone (someone you know must have an old iPhone you can wipe) and you don't have to download anything as such. Just put in his iCloud login and let it populate. I don't know if you can do this with an Android or other phone. Perhaps.

Do the same on a laptop. You may be able to do it as a partition of an existing one. If you put apps on the external hard drive, you might make that work. I mean you can download directly (if that's possible) but if it's not bootable, I don't think the easy way works.

This will get you all his phone history, voicemails, photos, calendar, contacts, text messages, notes, and more. And yes you can see most of that (for some reason, not the voicemails) on a computer if you put in the iCloud account.

As for passwords, if you don't want to just give them to your spouse, do you have a lawyer or a trusted friend who you can give a sealed envelope (or USB stick) to? Michael and I can unlock each other's phones and computers and that's enough.