How to recover a user password from SonicWall TZ 300
I got a call from a potential client about a problem he was having with his network, computers and the internet connection and wanted to also be able to add an access point in his office.
The problem was, he wasn’t able to log in to the SonicWall TZ 300 Firewall Appliance, he didn’t have the user name or the password; he couldn’t find the IT Guy that set up the appliance, worse yet he didn’t have a backup copy of the configuration file.
I haven’t heard of anyone being able to recover a password from a SonicWall Appliance, even when you call their Tech Support they will tell you, there is no backdoor to these Firewall Appliances, so if you don’t have the
- User Name and the Password
- A Backup Copy of the Config File
Your only option is to reset the appliance and re-configure it. That’s an easy job if you have a small network with no VPN connections to multiple offices and no VLAN’s.
The moral of this post is, ALWAYS make a backup copy of your config file, so in case you forget the password and your IT Guy is no where to be found, you can reset the appliance and restore the config file, another thing you can do is create multiple user accounts with administrator rights and write down user names and passwords and keep them in a safe place, more importantly remember where you kept them.
My only option with this client was to reset the SonicWall TZ 300 and reconfigure his network settings, wrote the admin account and password and gave it to him in writing and made a backup of his config file along with the latest firmware and saved it on an external drive and passed it onto him.