With the likelihood of multiple devices on any given home network ever increasing, most households now contain some form of a router. A router is the simplest manner to allow for multiple network connections to share a single external connection – like the one to your Internet provider. Routers are protected by a password and if you’ve followed best-practice, you’ve changed it from the default password to something more secure and memorable – hopefully. The problem is, a router is basically an appliance; it sits on the desk or otherwise out-of-sight and does it’s job once it’s been configured. It’s quite possible that after initial setup and changing of the password you never access it again. Now, this becomes a problem because passwords that aren’t used often are more likely to be forgotten. If this is the case, what are you options?
Many routers have a physical device reset switch on the back that will restore the configuration to it’s shipping state from the manufacturer. It’s not a bad last-ditch effort but it will then require configuring of everything again. There is another option however, but it requires a bit of forward thinking.
It’s an excellent idea to backup your router configuration to a file and store somewhere safe on your computer, if your router supports such a feature – most do however. If you have previously made a configuration backup it’s possible that the router password could then be extracted from that backup.
RouterPassView is another fine utility from NirSoft that attempts to uncover information from router backups such as admin passwords or even wireless keys and passwords. As is commonplace for NirSoft, RouterPassView requires no installation and is dead simple to use – just open your router configuration file from within the application. If the software is able to detect and decrypt the file you will quickly be presented with a tabular view of the data it contains. The passwords should be easily identifiable at this point!
As there are probably hundreds of home routers it’s impossible to expect a free application like RouterPasssView to identify and support them all. However, the software continues to be updated with expanded compatibility so if your router isn’t supported today, check back tomorrow.
RouterPassView currently supports:
- Linksys WRT54GL (With original firmware or Tomato firmware), WRT54G (only some of them), WRT160N, and possibly similar models.
- Edimax BR6204WG, and possibly similar models.
- Siemens ADSL SL2-141, and possibly similar models.
- Dynalink RTA1025W, and possibly similar models.
- NETGEAR WGT624, and possibly similar models.
- ASUS WL-520g, WL-600g, and possibly similar models.
- D-Link DIR-655, DIR-300, and possibly similar models.
- Sanex SA 5100, and possibly similar models.
- Sitecom WL-351, and possibly similar models.
- COMTREND 536+ (Only Internet Login)
- US Robotics 9108 ADSL (internet login and admin login)
- D-Link DSL-2540U/BRU/D ADSL2+, DSL-2650U, DSL-520B
- D-Link DVA-G3170i/PT
- TP-Link TD-8810 ADSL Modem/Router.
