Recover lost passwords for
Brazil Firewall or Coyote Linux

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You forgot the admin (root) password for your BrazilFW router? Or Coyote Linux? What to do? There is no need to re-install. Here is a way out.

Floppy Versions

The floppy versions of either BrazilFW or Coyote Linux are very easy to reset. Edit A:\config\coyote.cfg with notepad and replace the line starting with ADMIN_AUTH= by the one below and your new root password will be: forgot
ADMIN_AUTH="7mY9FNV5Ca/OMqHcE81QG0"

Hard Drive Versions

If your Brazil Firewall is on a hard drive and the version is 2.30.x or lower then you have a floppy drive available so it is still simple to recover the password. Boot any floppy version or flavour of DOS or Windows 95/98. Edit C:\config\coyote.cfg and do the same replacement as the step above.Don't have a copy of a DOS? Then use the BrazilFW 2.31 release 10 method below.

BrazilFW 2.31

BrazilFW 2.31 release 10 does not use a floppy disk because they are not installed in today's PCs. If there is one, or you can install one, you can follow the method above if you have a bootable floppy for DOS/Windows 95/98. You need to boot any OS that can read an MS-DOS FAT formatted drive. It can be USB, flash card, CDROM, or whatever. BART would do. The idea is to edit the file /config/coyote.cfg off the root of the drive. Since you have your ISO CD that created BrazilFW 2.31 release 10 we will use it to reset the password.

Boot the ISO CD you created for the BrazilFW 2.31 release 10 install.

ISOLINUX 3.62 2009-03-01 Copyright (C) 1994-2000 H. Peter Anvin
BrazilFW Firewall and Router v2.31.10

Loading linux ...........
Loading root.tgz ...........

Stuff will now fly by on the console until ……

BrazilFW Installer
==================

http://www.brazilfw.com.br

Attention !!!
This software will partition and format your hard disk.
If you go on any data stored on it will be permanently destroyed.
We are not responsible for any data loss or hardware damage.
USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Do you want to go ahead ? (y/n) -

Type n

This will give you: Installation Aborted. Press [ENTER]

Press the [ENTER] key.

Stuff will happen, it will generate keys and give errors. Finally you will get the familiar BrazilFW logo. Login the Linux system with userid root and the Configuration menu comes up. Select exit. You are now at the Linux command prompt.

Enter the command: mount  /dev/hda1  /mnt  then  edit  /mnt/config/coyote.cfg

Replace the line starting with ADMIN_AUTH= with the one below and your new root password will be: forgot
ADMIN_AUTH="7mY9FNV5Ca/OMqHcE81QG0" There is no cut-and-paste here so get it right.

CTRL-Q to exit edit then Y to save the file.

Next the command: Reboot

That's it! Don't forget to remove the CD.

This procedure also demonstrates how to break into a BrazilFW router. It is not the intent of this tutorial but does show that locking physical access to BrazilFW is very important since 80% of break-ins are inside jobs and physical access is 80% of that. You now see that anyone can do this.A dictionary attack could also work both from the inside and the outside. Sure SSH disconnects after 3 attempts and logs to syslog but someone can try all night and all day and you would never see it. Are you capturing syslog?No matter how you look at it, the evil cracker is one password away from your system.Using public key encryption would make it real hard to break-in from the outside.

DISCLAIMER: The following instructions come with no warranty. Use at your discretion and risks. I am not responsible for its misuse, damages, or losses that can be caused directly or indirectly. It is assumed that you practice safe computing and take backups before making changes.

Stuff is written here for the uninitiated and no prior knowledge on the subject is presumed.

For support use the Brazil Firewall forums so everyone can share the information.