What makes a keychain item unique (in iOS)?

Question

My question concerns keychains in iOS (iPhone, iPad, ...). I think (but am not sure) that the implementation of keychains under Mac OS X raises the same question with the same answer.

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iOS provides five types (classes) of keychain items. You must chose one of those five values for the key kSecClass to determine the type:

kSecClassGenericPassword  used to store a generic password
kSecClassInternetPassword used to store an internet password
kSecClassCertificate      used to store a certificate
kSecClassKey              used to store a kryptographic key
kSecClassIdentity         used to store an identity (certificate + private key)

After long time of reading apples documentation, blogs and forum-entries, I found out that a keychain item of type kSecClassGenericPassword gets its uniqueness from the attributes kSecAttrAccessGroup, kSecAttrAccount and kSecAttrService.

If those three attributes in request 1 are the same as in request 2, then you receive the same generic password keychain item, regardless of any other attributes. If one (or two or all) of this attributes changes its value, then you get different items.

But kSecAttrService is only available for items of type kSecClassGenericPassword, so it can't be part of the "unique key" of an item of any other type, and there seems to be no documentation that points out clearly which attributes uniquely determine a keychain item.

The sample code in the class "KeychainItemWrapper" of "GenericKeychain" uses the attribute kSecAttrGeneric to make an item unique, but this is a bug. The two entries in this example only are stored as two distinct entries, because their kSecAttrAccessGroup is different (one has the access group set, the other lets it free). If you try to add a 2nd password without an access group, using Apple's KeychainItemWrapper, you will fail.

So, please, answer my questions:

• Is it true, that the combination of kSecAttrAccessGroup, kSecAttrAccount and kSecAttrService is the "unique key" of a keychain item whose kSecClass is kSecClassGenericPassword?
• Which attributes makes a keychain item unique if its kSecClass is not kSecClassGenericPassword?

Lowestoft

There is a blog entry here about this. – Debra

Answer 1

The primary keys are as follows (derived from open source files from Apple, see Schema.m4, KeySchema.m4 and SecItem.cpp):

• For a keychain item of class kSecClassGenericPassword, the primary key is the combination of kSecAttrAccount and kSecAttrService.
• For a keychain item of class kSecClassInternetPassword, the primary key is the combination of kSecAttrAccount, kSecAttrSecurityDomain, kSecAttrServer, kSecAttrProtocol, kSecAttrAuthenticationType, kSecAttrPort and kSecAttrPath.
• For a keychain item of class kSecClassCertificate, the primary key is the combination of kSecAttrCertificateType, kSecAttrIssuer and kSecAttrSerialNumber.
• For a keychain item of class kSecClassKey, the primary key is the combination of kSecAttrApplicationLabel, kSecAttrApplicationTag, kSecAttrKeyType, kSecAttrKeySizeInBits, kSecAttrEffectiveKeySize, and the creator, start date and end date which are not exposed by SecItem yet.
• For a keychain item of class kSecClassIdentity I haven't found info on the primary key fields in the open source files, but as an identity is the combination of a private key and a certificate, I assume the primary key is the combination of the primary key fields for kSecClassKey and kSecClassCertificate.

As each keychain item belongs to a keychain access group, it feels like the keychain access group (field kSecAttrAccessGroup) is an added field to all these primary keys.

Christoperchristoph

Sounds like a really good answer! Thank you! I'll check it and I want to wait one or two days for additional comments from other users, but you are a hot candidate for the +50 points from the bounty. – Photothermic

Great answer! I am working for some days on implementing a generic Keychain wrapper for certificates and private keys. That's a lot different to Apple's sample code that only stores string credentials (username/password). However, I have found out that when you set the kSecClass to kSecClassCertificate or kSecClassKey the Keychain checks also if the entry (the value) is already stored. This prevents from adding the same certificate or key twice. Also if you specify a different kSecAttrApplicationTag for a key (which must be unique, regarding the post above) it'll fail. – Melmon

@Melmon It's good to know about that additional check, thanks! – Christoperchristoph

It may help to think of the kSecClass attribute as the table name, and the specified values above as just the primary key of the respective table. – Debra

What is the semantics of kSecAttrAccount and kSecAttrService? -- or can the programmer choose any semantics she decides? – Monarchal

kSecAttrService is for storing the service, kSecAttrAccount is for storing the account name. You could store different things in them, but that may get confusing. – Christoperchristoph

what's the diff between kSecAttrLabel & ksecValueData? – Newman

Does anyone know the difference between kSecAttrAccount and kSecAttrGeneric and when/how should I use each one? Thanks. – Bezel

I ended up here because I had used Apple's KeychainItem wrapper. Turns out it has a bad bug, which you likely hit as soon as you store 2 things with it: change kSecAttrGeneric (everywhere it appears) to kSecAttrAccount – Miquelon

Answer 2

I was hitting a bug the other day (on iOS 7.1) that is related to this question. I was using SecItemCopyMatching to read a kSecClassGenericPassword item and it kept returning errSecItemNotFound (-25300) even though kSecAttrAccessGroup, kSecAttrAccount and kSecAttrService were all matching the item in the keychain.

Eventually I figured out that kSecAttrAccessible didn't match. The value in the keychain held pdmn = dk (kSecAttrAccessibleAlways), but I was using kSecAttrAccessibleWhenUnlocked.

Of course this value is not needed in the first place for SecItemCopyMatching, but the OSStatus was not errSecParam nor errSecBadReq but just errSecItemNotFound (-25300) which made it a bit tricky to find.

For SecItemUpdate I have experienced the same issue but in this method even using the same kSecAttrAccessible in the query parameter didn't work. Only completely removing this attribute fixed it.

I hope this comment will save few precious debugging moments for some of you.

Bein

Answer 3

Answer given by @Tammo Freese seems to be correct (but not mentioning all primary keys). I was searching for some proof in the documentation. Finally found:

Apple Documentation mentioning primary keys for each class of secret (quote below):

The system considers an item to be a duplicate for a given keychain when that keychain already has an item of the same class with the same set of composite primary keys. Each class of keychain item has a different set of primary keys, although a few attributes are used in common across all classes. In particular, where applicable, kSecAttrSynchronizable and kSecAttrAccessGroup are part of the set of primary keys. The additional per-class primary keys are listed below:

• For generic passwords, the primary keys include kSecAttrAccount and kSecAttrService.
• For internet passwords, the primary keys include kSecAttrAccount, kSecAttrSecurityDomain, kSecAttrServer, kSecAttrProtocol, kSecAttrAuthenticationType, kSecAttrPort, and kSecAttrPath.
• For certificates, the primary keys include kSecAttrCertificateType, kSecAttrIssuer, and kSecAttrSerialNumber.
• For key items, the primary keys include kSecAttrKeyClass, kSecAttrKeyType, kSecAttrApplicationLabel, kSecAttrApplicationTag, kSecAttrKeySizeInBits, and kSecAttrEffectiveKeySize.
• For identity items, which are a certificate and a private key bundled together, the primary keys are the same as for a certificate. Because a private key may be certified more than once, the uniqueness of the certificate determines that of the identity.

Carousal

While this link may answer the question, it is better to include the essential parts of the answer here and provide the link for reference. Link-only answers can become invalid if the linked page changes. - From Review – Miraculous

agreed, although in this case it meant copying the whole link. – Carousal

Answer 4

Here is another piece of useful information about uniqueness of a keychain item, found in the "Ensure Searchability" section of this Apple docs page.

To be able to find the item later, you’re going to use your knowledge of its attributes. In this example, the server and the account are the item’s distinguishing characteristics. For constant attributes (here, the server), use the same value during lookup. In contrast, the account attribute is dynamic, because it holds a value provided by the user at runtime. As long as your app never adds similar items with varying attributes (such as passwords for different accounts on the same server), you can omit these dynamic attributes as search parameters and instead retrieve them along with the item. As a result, when you look up the password, you also get the corresponding username.

If your app does add items with varying dynamic attributes, you’ll need a way to choose among them during retrieval. One option is to record information about the items in another way. For example, if you keep records of users in a Core Data model, you store the username there after using keychain services to store the password field. Later, you use the user name pulled from your data model to condition the search for the password.

In other cases, it may make sense to further characterize the item by adding more attributes. For example, you might include the kSecAttrLabel attribute in the original add query, providing a string that marks the item for the particular purpose. Then you’ll be able to use this attribute to narrow your search later.

Item of class kSecClassInternetPassword was used in the example, but there is a note that says:

Keychain services also offers the related kSecClassGenericPassword item class. Generic passwords are similar in most respects to Internet passwords, but they lack certain attributes specific to remote access (for example, they don’t have a kSecAttrServer attribute). When you don’t need these extra attributes, use a generic password instead.

Hasa