home-internet Comments 1 min read
Model: BSNL Dataone ATE ZXDSL 531B modem. (Below points worth a shot for any other modem also)

Assumption: You have saved your modem settings locally on your machine. If not, don't be disheartened (Do slap yourself thrice though), this post will help you out.

If you don't know how to upload/save your modem/router's configuration file, read this.

I had forgotten the admin password and I didn't want to reset my modem. Just wanted to see if I could get any info from the configuration that I backed up.

I opened up the file and searched for the keyword "admin" and I came across this block:
<sysusername value="admin">
<syspassword value="YWRtaW5fcGFzc3dk">
Took a blind shot to see if it is a base64 encoding and <insert your jumping-with-surprise word here> it was base64 encoded!

Running this through the following command line on Ubuntu:

echo "YWRtaW5fcGFzc3dk" | openssl base64 -d

results in:

admin_passwd

If you don't have your Linux box handy (I don't see any reason why you shouldn't) you can use any of the online base64 decoders to get the plain text. Here's one.

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