What is the EscrowService keychain item? I was curious what iCloud Keychain (which I haven't explicitly stored any passwords in, yet) was storing, so I headed to Keychain Access.  There I found an item I wasn't familiar with called EscrowService, which appears to have a Date Modified of around the time I was updating to Mavericks:





Key escrow being very concerning (by definition, it is the storage of a key with a trusted third party), I disabled iCloud Keychain.  The item remains in my Local Items keychain, along with other items such as server passwords used by Mail.app and Wi-Fi keys.

Does anyone know what this item is for?  I suspect if com.apple.lakitu can be identified, it might be a step in the right direction, but I'm coming up short on searches.
Well, Lakitu is the turtle that rides in a cloud and throws spiny bombs at the hero of the Super Mario Bros game.



However, I have no such key in any of the Macs which I have enabled iCloud keychain sync, so despite the extremely evocative name of com.apple.lakitu I'm not so sure it's part of the default setup unless it's a placeholder for someone that hasn't yet allowed any keychain items to be stored for syncing?



My only guess is that it holds a key until you establish your syncing or if you do not choose a security code and it stores a self generated code rather than using just your iCloud keychain pin to sync. If you haven't enabled an actual long form security code or added a second device that could be a reason why I'm not seeing this entry and you are.