[Ponmayilal]

After a longtime, I ventured to check my Dataone usage from the Dataone portal. To my chagrin, I found that the password, which I thought was right was rejected. Well, one can ring up the ISP, request them to reset the password and then set a new password. But this process is going to be a time consuming one considering the almost non-existent Dataone Customer Service. So I started exploring the possibility of recovering the password somehow and within minutes my google search yielded an elegant solution given by a resourceful poster in a forum. Here it is in pictorial form.

1. Open the Netgear router's webpage 192.168.0.1 and input the router's user id and password. Check with your manual if in doubt. (usually admin and admin - unless you had changed the password to something else). You will be getting into the router's configuration settings.



2. In the left hand menu click on "Back up settings".



3. In the resulting web page click on "Backup"



4. In the file download dialog box click on "Save" to save the netgear.cfg file.



5. In the "Save as" dialog box select "All Files" in the file type, rename the file name as netgear.xml and click on "Save".





6. Open the folder containing the netgear.xml file ( I had saved it in "My Documents"), right click on it and open the file with Notepad. ( If Notepad is not listed, click on "Choose Program" and select Notepad and then open it in Notepad.)



7. And there you are. Carefuly read through the file. You can find the User login ID and Password in plain text.



I am not sure whether other brand modems also have a configuration backup utility. Presuming there is one, the same process of saving the file as .xml and then reading it with Notepad, may reveal the password. This is purely my guess.

Anyway I am happy that I could recover my password without reaching BSNL.

[ph03n!x]

Hehe.. this is an old trick we used to do (I used to work for a networking company's support ). But most recent routers encrypt the configuration backup, making it more difficult if not impossible to recover ISP credentials.

OT: Time to see if DD-WRT / Tomato / Linux boots off your router?!!

[Ponmayilal]

Oh! Then had I put my problem in this forum ( which I thought of but did not do since I got a resolution in no time) you could have given a pointer to it. That's nice indeed.

Come to think of it, the original post on which this write-up is based is just less than a year old. There are still old timers !!

[anujmishra]

This is very old and known way of getting password. It works only with older routers. It will not work with any new router as it save password in encrypted format in XML file.

There is one more method in which you need not to store config file. You have to download WebPage Password Reader software and once you point you mouse to password field, it will show actual password in place of "*". There are many hacking software are present over internet. These software forcibly change style of editfields.

You were lucky to get hold of your password, otherwise you would have to gone through DataOne call center.

[tsk1979]

Okay why this round about way? Just go to the page where you enter password(where ****** shows up), and then press Ctrl+U(show source) in firefox. Voila, your password is in front of you!

[Ponmayilal]

Originally Posted by anujmishra

..... You have to download WebPage Password Reader software and once you point you mouse to password field, it will show actual password in place of "*"...

Thanks. Shall try it sometime.

Originally Posted by tsk1979

Okay why this round about way? Just go to the page where you enter password(where ****** shows up), and then press Ctrl+U(show source) in firefox. Voila, your password is in front of you!

Thanks. Very easy solution. Tried it and here it is. Select the password field, right click and view frame source. Somewhere on the page one finds the Login ID and password.

I am happy that my post has brought in some valuable info for me and others.





Material for another updated tutorial.

[Ponmayilal]

Originally Posted by anujmishra

...There is one more method in which you need not to store config file. You have to download WebPage Password Reader software and once you point you mouse to password field, it will show actual password in place of "*"....

I tried one such software Asterisks Password Viewer. It would not read the login password put into the router.

The trial version can read only the first three characters when you move its cursor over the asterisks in the password field but that should in most cases be sufficient for one to guess the forgotten password. But the fact as I found it is that it can read the password only in cases where you have permitted IE to remember the password. I normally do not permit IE to remember the password where it offers to.

That apart, in the case of a router, the password one puts in into the configuration settings is stored in the memory of the router and IE has nothing to do except to display the web interface and will not offer to remember the password when you input it the first time.

So, IMO , all these password recovery software will not help in recovering the login password from the router's memory.

[SirAlec]

BTW! Just for the info

data one admin password and username (portal id) and dialing username & password are totally different.

[Ponmayilal]

We took the Dataone BB connection in Jan 2005 on its launch day itself. The Dataone Portal Log-in ID and password is the same as the ADSL login ID and password that we have put into the router. If I change the password to login into the portal (which one can do in the portal), I have to change the login password in the router too to get connected. We were given only one set of User ID and default PW . We changed the default PW through the portal. As already indicated in my post, I recovered the forgotten PW from the router and then used it to log into the dataone portal to see my usage details.

But things could have changed later, since I remember to have seen some discussion on it. There appears to be two different nodes. The initial batch of customers were connected to node 1 and the subsequent batch connected to another node or something like that.

As a matter of fact when they first installed the modem,they were installing a dialler software only wherein one had to input the user id and password given by them. My father then went through the modem manual and entered the login ID and password in the modem itself. This was unknown to BSNL personnel then. All newbies .

[SirAlec]

its the same for mtnl though