I believe everyone know that Fortigate Firewall can be reset to Factory Defaults by using Web GUI or CLI interface. In the event of you lost or you do not know the admin password for the fortigate unit, how to reset the Firewall unit? The only thing that you can do is to use maintainer account which have permission to do reset for super admin password or do firewall factory reset.
To do that, you will need:
- physical access the box
- Console cable
- Terminal software such as Putty.exe (Windows) or Terminal (MacOS)
- Serial number of the FortiGate device
Steps:-
– Connect your laptop or computer to the Firewall via the Console port
– Launch your terminal software
– Reboot or Power Cycle the Firewall
– Wait for the Firewall name and login prompt to appear.
– Enter the Username as maintainer, password as bcpb with Firewall Serial no in UPPERCASE