Password Reset | CLI | 1500

[Tharindu]

Hi Guys,

One of our customers lost his admin password for the firewall and requested to reset it. Can anyone help me with the steps or guide?  

TIA

[Chris_Atkinson]

Is there any access to the appliance at all or he lost the password for the only admin account configured?

If this is a centrally managed appliance you can look at: https://support.checkpoint.com/results/sk/sk119633

Alternately if it's locally managed it may need to be factory reset, in the current EA version a new feature has been added to help avoid such scenarios.

[Tharindu]

Hi Chris,

He only lost the admin password. We believe we can get an SSH session but won't be able to log in.

Also, it's a locally managed firewall. Is there any solution to recover the password without resetting the device?

[G_W_Albrecht]

https://community.checkpoint.com/t5/SMB-Gateways-Spark/Recover-lost-admin-password-from-a-locally-ma...

[Tharindu]

Hi,

It means we have to reset the box right?

TIA

[_Val_]

Yes. Unless you have an another admin account that still works

[Tharindu]

Hi,

Unfortunately, the customer doesn't have any other account.

[_Val_]

Too bad. Any existing backup of that appliance?

[Tharindu]

Hi,

yeah we have 03 month old backup

[_Val_]

Well, this is better than nothing. Perform a factory reset, set up two admin accounts, just in case, and see if you can restore your policies from that backup or not. Plan for an extensive downtime while you do that, or, if you have another appliance handy, try doing it in the lab first, to see if it works.

[G_W_Albrecht]

It will replace the passwd and shadow files. You can change the passwd in backup, see https://community.checkpoint.com/t5/SMB-Gateways-Spark/Replace-expert-password-on-SMB-Appliance/m-p/...

[_Val_]

Thanks for sharing, I see a way out here 🙂

[G_W_Albrecht]

Another alternative, use USB media during boot: https://community.checkpoint.com/t5/SMB-Gateways-Spark/set-expert-password-hash-using-autoconf-clish...

Not sure if this works on a configured appliance, but could be tested.

[G_W_Albrecht]

Backup contains the old password...

[_Val_]

Will it remove the second admin account created on the device; as I suggested above? 

[Tharindu]

Thank you, guys, for your great support. found an another login and we logged into the firewall using that account 

[_Val_]

Fantastic news, thanks for sharing