About encrypted backups in iTunes

[gabeh1018]

my wife recently upgraded to an iPhone 10s Max. Before we exchanged phones, we backed up her phone to iTunes completely forgetting there was a password set for the backup back in 2016 when she got the 7+.
so when we tried restoring our backup we were completely thrown when it prompted us for the backup password. This is the one password that was not filed away. We have  tried hundreds of combinations of our most commonly used passwords but to no avail.
After doing some research online, I've come across several different programs that claim they can decrypt/find the password. Has anyone  else experienced this. If so, any luck retrieving your password? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Gabe

[BlobVanDam]

I had to do this a long time ago for my brother's phone because he couldn't remember the password on the backup. I used a program called Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker Pro (err not a legal copy.....). Not sure how much has changed since then for iTunes' backups, as this was probably for an iPhone 3/4.

Using their default options I didn't get anywhere because it takes too long to go through every possible combination, and their dictionary was very limited, but I downloaded a few hacked password lists online and fed those through it, and it eventually managed to get the password in under 20 seconds. But it ended up just being a single word because my brother is not great with passwords.

If the password is a combination of common words using common permutations (ie numbers on the end, letter/number substitutions, additional characters), you've got an ok chance of cracking it. If the password is a combination of your 5 favourite Ugandan warlord names followed by 10 random ascii characters, you're probably out of luck. Theoretically any password could be cracked with enough time, it's just a matter of whether it's realistically feasible.