titanium-22 wrote:
> a maximum of 30 additional attempts. After those additional attempts are exhausted, the Secure Enclave no longer processes any requests to decrypt the volume or verify the password, and the data on the drive becomes unrecoverable.
And wow, that is massively user hostile. I understand imposing something like 24 hours between attempts, to prevent brute forcing, but nuking all data after 30 tries (20 if you don't have an institutional key, probably less because iCloud Recovery doesn't seem to apply to file volumes) is just senseless.
I surmise that Apple is trying to balance protection of user data (which is a real and serious concern) when a Mac or iPhone is stolen (which happens frequently) versus making it easier for a user who may have forgotten their password. I will also surmise that MANY laptops and iPhones are stolen each year, versus relatively few users who fail after 10 or 30 attempts to enter a password. We might each disagree with the balance that Apple has settled on here, but it is not an easy thing to address.
I think Apple might be assuming that all users have at least one recent and viable backup of all their data. Everyone should have that, otherwise one risks losing everything to some sort of mishap, be it theft, fire, flood, earthquake, hardware failure, forgotten passwords, etc. In that case, the lack of access after 10 or 30 failed password attempts might not seem that bad because all data can ultimately be recovered from the backup after a complete reset of the device. While iCloud is not a true backup for a Mac (it can be a true backup for an iPhone), it does enable seamless and straightforward recovery of many user files when a new computer is obtained or an old one is reset. But Time Machine comes built in to every Mac, it makes backups trivial to do, and everyone should do it, especially with encrypted devices.
I actually sympathize with the user who passed the limit of 10 or 30 failed attempts. But keep in mind that 30+ failed attempts is a lot, how could that be normal and expected? And Apple actually allows for 10 failed password entries, and then 10 each failed attempts for iCloud recovery, FileVault recovery, and institutional key, for a grand total of as many as 40 tries. But if a person is failing 10+ times on each of those 4 methods, what is actually going on here?
There is an obvious solution -- make backups of anything that matters. John Galt says he has at least 3 redundant backups of his Macs. Me too -- I have two Time Machine backups plus two clone type backups of each Mac.
