iTunes Backup Explorer

iTunes Backup Explorer is a graphical open-source tool that can show, extract, and replace files in iPhone and iPad backups.

It supports both encrypted and non-encrypted backups, currently from iOS 10.2 onwards.

Most programs that support encrypted backups are either limited trials or expensive. There are apparently only very few open-source projects that target this issue and none that are also useful for the average user.

Installation

• Open your terminal and type in java -version.
• If the command was not found or the version is below 11, download and install Java for your operating system, e.g. from here.
• Download the jar file of the latest release of iTunes Backup Explorer.

Windows

• Simply double-click the downloaded file to start the program.
• From the command line: java -jar JARFILE.jar. Replace JARFILE.jar with the name of the file you downloaded.

macOS

• cd to the download directory and type in chmod +x JARFILE.jar.
• You may need to enable Full Disk Access in System Preferences -> Security -> Privacy for the Jar Launcher or Terminal.app / iTerm.app.
• Now, you should be able to simply double-click the file to start the program.
• If that does not work, you may need to type java -jar JARFILE.jar into the terminal to run it.

Linux

• cd to the download directory and type in chmod +x JARFILE.jar.
• Depending on your specific system, you should be able to double-click the file to start the program.
• If that does not work, use java -jar JARFILE.jar to run it.

Credits

I started looking into this after I saw this brilliant answer on StackOverflow by andrewdotn to a question that has already been viewed more than 220.000 times. It explains in detail how iOS backups are structured and how they are encrypted, even providing a working code example.

So a huge thanks to him,

his sources iPhone Data Protection in Depth, iOS Hacker's Handbook, a GitHub comment, the iphone-dataprotection project and the Apple iOS Security Guide for iOS 11 (in the Web Archive)

and Forensic Analysis of iTunes Backups by Jack Farley