This is a “password of the day” generator for Arris TM602A cable modems, and probably other Arris models.
I created this because a cable modem died on me and my ISP, Cabovisão (if you’re in Portugal, I highly recommend them), brought me a new one: an Arris TM602A.
As usual when I receive a new technological gadget, I had to explore it. The web interface, accessible via http://192.168.100.1, is quite simpler than my previous modem, the Scientific Atlanta Webstar 2203c, but it also has a password protected page.
A bit of googling provided the answers I needed: a couple of pages with a list of passwords of the day (this device has a different password every day) and a page with a password generator (for the TM501A model but seems to work fine for the TM602A).
That gave me access to the protected page but I didn’t want to have to resort to a couple of pages every time I wanted to access my modem’s protected page. Besides, I didn’t know how long the pages would last (they’re both forum posts). The password generator was no solution either, because it’s written for .NET, Mono isn’t able to execute it properly and I’m obviously not going to boot Windows just because of this.
So I brought the matter into my own hands and I wrote my own password generator.
You have two options:
- Use the online generator to generate one or more passwords.
- If you want to use a bookmarklet, drag this Arris password of the day link to your bookmarks and whenever you click it, you’ll get the password for the current day.
Marcel Valdez Orozco ported the generator to C# (usable in LINQPad) and posted the code in a gist.
Daniel J. H. created a C++11 version for the command line.
Thanks guys!
If you have your own port to another language, let me know and I’ll add it here.
Please note that I did this mostly for fun and not for profit of any kind, nor does this open up anything private or dangerous to the world. Unlike with the Scientific Atlanta Webstar 2203c, which allowed a little bit of fiddling with the modem’s configuration, the Arris TM602A does not allow any modifications to the configuration at all – all it allows is to enable or disable a couple of logs, and run some diagnostic tests. In other words, this tool does not provide access to any secret information or allow you to do any malicious actions by itself. You do need to be aware if you are breaking any laws or contracts if you use it, though.