This repo contains scripts to export all your password items and secure notes from Apple's Keychain.app into plain text files in CSV format, merge such files and import them back into a keychain.
No trick or reverse engineering is used: exporting is performed by Apple's
security tool, using macOS's assistive support to streamline the process.
The current master should work in (High) Sierra. Earlier versions of macOS/OS X are not supported.
To import/export password items, open the AppleScript script in Script Editor. The script may be run from source.
Before running the script, go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Accessibility, and allow Script Editor to control your computer. This step is required to avoid SecurityAgent to prompt you with a dialog for each item you want to export. It basically allows AppleScript to press the Allow button in such dialogs for you.
You may also build the script into an application if you want. In this case, you must grant the app control of your computer in the same way.
The script always asks for the password to unlock your keychain (you recognise the dialog by the Script Editor icon). Since that dialog is not very secure, it is recommended that you change your keychain's password in Keychain.app before exporting your keychain, and restore the original password afterwards. You may also be asked to unlock your keychain by SecurityAgent (which you do by providing your keychain's password). So, you may have to enter your keychain's password once or twice. After that, SecurityAgent will keep prompting for a password for each exported item, but the script should fill it out for you automatically, so no further action from you will be required.
The script makes a backup of the keychain before importing or exporting data. Backups are timestamped and saved into the same folder containing the keychain. In any case, it is a good idea to keep a separate backup, just in case.
When importing items into a keychain, matching items already present in the keychain are overwritten if their timestamps are older than the timestamps of the items being imported. If there are items without timestamps in the CSV file, the script will ask the user what to do with them. Note that this will be asked once and the choice applied to all the items being imported.
Also note that all new or updated items are assigned the current time as their new timestamps. There is no possibility to retain the original timestamps from the CSV file.
Finally, access control lists are not exported.
If you get this error:
This script will be terminated prematurely because the following error has
occurred:
security: SecKeychainUnlock [...]: The user name or
passphrase you entered is not correct. (Error number: 51)
open Keychain.app and lock your keychain. Then, run the script again.
A Ruby script is provided to merge two CSV files containing password data into
one. See ./merge_csv.rb --help for the details.
Not directly. The Local Items keychain, located at
~/Library/Keychain/<UUID>/<name>.db, is a SQLite database containing
obfuscated data, so its format is different from the format of a standard
keychain. As far as I can see, security cannot dump such keychains, and I do
not know of any tool that would do that.
You may proceed as follows:
- In Keychain.app, create a new keychain: File > New Keychain…
- Select the Local Items keychain in the sidebar, then select all the items (or the ones you want to export) and copy them by choosing Edit > Copy.
- Select the keychain created at step one and choose Edit > Paste.
Such process is painful, though, because Keychain.app will keep asking for a password for each item. You may automate such process with a bit of scripting. For your convenience, the script that allows you to fill in the password prompts for you is reported below:
tell application "System Events"
repeat while exists (processes where name is "SecurityAgent")
tell process "SecurityAgent"
set frontmost to true
try
keystroke "PUT YOUR KEYCHAIN'S PASSWORD HERE"
delay 0.1
keystroke return
delay 0.1
on error
-- do nothing to skip the error
end try
end tell
delay 0.5
end repeat
end tellYou may run this directly from Script Editor. A similar approach can be used to
export /Library/Keychains/System.keychain.
Note: Keychain.app won't allow you to paste some items (most likely, automatically created by the system, not yours). In such case, the snippet above will produce a script error and Keychain.app will show an error dialog, too. Dismiss both and run the script again. Repeat every time you get an error.
If you want to import the CSV file generated by CSVKeychain into a KeePass
2 database and you are on macOS, you may need to convert it to XML first. For
such purpose, add a category column to the CSV file using the included
add_category.rb script. Then, use my
csv2keepassxml to generate
a KeePass 2 XML file.
Copyright (c) 2011–2018, Lifepillar
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