For those who want absolute, low-level control—including enabling Telnet and SSH for command-line access—there is a community-developed, multi-step process. This method exploits a configuration file vulnerability.
As John left the warehouse, he realized that he had stumbled upon something much bigger than a simple backdoor. He decided to report his findings to Nokia's PSIRT and work with them to patch the vulnerability.
: Always verify the "Device Manager" or "Admin" password printed on your specific unit’s sticker.
The config.cfg file is encrypted or encoded. Several community-developed scripts can decode it into a readable XML file. One popular tool is available on GitHub as part of a collection of "nokia_superuser_tools". A typical command to decode the file is: python3 nokia-router-cfg-tool.py -u config.cfg .
If your router has been factory reset or disconnected from the fiber line, your computer might not receive an IP address automatically. Set your computer’s IPv4 address to: 192.168.1.50 Set the Subnet Mask to: 255.255.255.0
The engineer handed John a small USB drive.
Use the same tool to repack the modified XML file back into a new config.cfg file: python3 nokia-router-cfg-tool.py -recompInfo config-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXX.xml 0xffffffffmv config.cfg config.cfg.bak mv config-27102025-041650.cfg config.cfg .
Some power users discovered that the device had a hidden root account accessible via Telnet (port 23) you first enabled it via the super admin web interface. The web super admin credentials for this firmware version were:
For those who want absolute, low-level control—including enabling Telnet and SSH for command-line access—there is a community-developed, multi-step process. This method exploits a configuration file vulnerability.
As John left the warehouse, he realized that he had stumbled upon something much bigger than a simple backdoor. He decided to report his findings to Nokia's PSIRT and work with them to patch the vulnerability.
: Always verify the "Device Manager" or "Admin" password printed on your specific unit’s sticker.
The config.cfg file is encrypted or encoded. Several community-developed scripts can decode it into a readable XML file. One popular tool is available on GitHub as part of a collection of "nokia_superuser_tools". A typical command to decode the file is: python3 nokia-router-cfg-tool.py -u config.cfg .
If your router has been factory reset or disconnected from the fiber line, your computer might not receive an IP address automatically. Set your computer’s IPv4 address to: 192.168.1.50 Set the Subnet Mask to: 255.255.255.0
The engineer handed John a small USB drive.
Use the same tool to repack the modified XML file back into a new config.cfg file: python3 nokia-router-cfg-tool.py -recompInfo config-XXXXXXXX-XXXXXX.xml 0xffffffffmv config.cfg config.cfg.bak mv config-27102025-041650.cfg config.cfg .
Some power users discovered that the device had a hidden root account accessible via Telnet (port 23) you first enabled it via the super admin web interface. The web super admin credentials for this firmware version were: