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Many Netgear routers have telnet support built-in, but gaining access to it requires an extra step of sending a specially formatted payload to the telnet daemon before it will allow users to log in. Netgear provides a windows executable called "telnetenable.exe" for doing just this, however, unix/linux/OSX users are out of luck with a "sanctioned" method.

The openwrt wiki provides information about how to enable the telnet console for your netgear device. Included on this page is a link to a couple of C-source implementations of the telnetenable algorithm. This C source is a bit tricky to get working, and depending on your setup might be a real pain.

I've translated the algorithm from C to Python, which should make it easier to actually get telnet working for many users, and will also make it easier to keep the code updated and working.

Requirements As of right now, the implementation requires that the PyCrypto module is installed in your system. This can be obtained either from MacPorts, or from the PyCrypto website.

Other than PyCrypto the implementation should be using python-standard extensions. It should be noted that this version was only tested with Python2.6

Running Simple:

python telnetenable.py IP - The IP of your Netgear device, usually 192.168.1.1

MAC - The mac address should be the MAC address of the LAN port on your Netgear device, WITHOUT the ":". e.g. "00:40:5E:21:14:4E" would be written as "00405E21144E".

Username - Username for accessing the telnet console, usually 'Gearguy'

Password - Password for accessing the telnet console, usually 'Geardog'