Password Recovery for Fortinet FortiGate Firewalls

• Connect to the serial console of the FortiGate unit (9600-1-1)
• Boot up the FortiGate unit
• as username, enter maintainer
• as password, enter bcpb + SerialNo
• E.g. if the SerialNo is FG100ETK18036180, the password is bcpbFG100ETK18036180
• This has to be done within 14 seconds after the logon prompt appears

• Once logged in, you can either
  • execute the command execute factory reset to set the unit to factory defaults, afterwards the password for the admin user will be empty.
  • if you want to keep the config, change the admin user's password using the command set

# config system admin
edit admin
set password
end

• type get system status to display information about the SerialNo, FortiOS version, etc.