T1634.001 Keychain

Adversaries may collect keychain data from an iOS device to acquire credentials. Keychains are the built-in way for iOS to keep track of users’ passwords and credentials for many services and features such as Wi-Fi passwords, websites, secure notes, certificates, private keys, and VPN credentials.

On the device, the keychain database is stored outside of application sandboxes to prevent unauthorized access to the raw data. Standard iOS APIs allow applications access to their own keychain contained within the database. By utilizing a privilege escalation exploit or existing root access, adversaries can access the entire encrypted database.¹²

Procedure Examples

Mitigations

Detection

References