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About five years ago I was in search of a network PDU device that would give me control over the network to turn outlets on and off but I wasn’t willing to spend the $300 plus for a modern device so while browsing through eBay I stumbled across the APC AP9210 8 port network PDU.   At the time I knew it was pretty old but was willing to give it a try being that it was only $50 shipped to my door.

 

TLDR: TAKE ME TO THE PASSWORD GENERATOR!

 

After finding some rack ears for it and installing it into my small 8 unit rack then plugging everything in I quickly figured out that it did not come with a password.  After doing some research I also found that there was no password reset method like most modern devices have.  Luckily I did find a way to serial into a not so secret back door specifically built for APC employees and I also found a forum on APC’s website with plenty of folks willing to assist with cracking and resetting the password.  All that was required to crack the password was the units serial number but unfortunately my sticker rubbed off over time but the good news was that the aforementioned backdoor serial login provided the serial number within the menu.  Once I provided my serial number to the friendly folks on the form they got right back to me with the password I needed to log in then change the password to my liking.  Now after five years of getting emails from the same forum that provided me and many others with passwords I decided to reverse engineer the algorithm and release a online password generator.

 

Being that the device is now 25 years old it is pretty slow but it still gets the job done.  I can login via telnet or web GUI — which I don’t recommend the web GUI — and control all of my outlets.  You can still find these devices for sale on eBay for around $50 to $70 but you may be better off finding something a bit newer for a little bit more money.

Serial Cable Login Instructions

Connect with these settings

  • 19200 baud
  • 8 data bits
  • no parity
  • 1 stop bit
  • User: apc or any
  • Pass: TENmanUFactOryPOWER
  • Locate the units serial number
  • Input serial number into Password Generator
  • Repeat the steps above with the generated password