Password Monitoring - Apple Support

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2021-06-12 13:30:05

Password Monitoring is a feature that matches passwords stored in the user’s Password AutoFill keychain against a continuously updated and curated list of passwords known to have been exposed in leaks from different online organizations. If the feature is turned on, the monitoring protocol continuously matches the user’s Password AutoFill keychain passwords against the curated list.

The user’s device continuously performs round robin checks on a user’s passwords, querying on an interval that’s independent of the user’s passwords. This helps ensure that verification states remain up to date with the current curated list of leaked passwords. To help prevent leakage of information related to how many unique passwords a user has, requests are batched and performed in parallel. A fixed number of passwords are verified in parallel on each check, and should the user have fewer than this number, random passwords are generated and added to the queries to make up the difference.

Passwords are matched in a two-part process. The most commonly leaked passwords are contained within a local list on the user’s device. If the user’s password occurs on this list, the user is immediately notified without any external interaction. This is designed to ensure that no information is leaked about the passwords a user has that are most at risk due to a password breach.