Tue Dec 26, 2017 8:16 pm
The serial port access will only give you the ability to have the router boot into netboot mode so that you can overwrite the flash using this method (as opposed to having to hold down the reset button for some amount of time). Serial access does not have any kind of security override backdoor. If you don't have a backup of your router with a known password, then you're pretty much out of luck. One thing that did work for me in the past was that I happened to have the binary backup file from a router with unknown password, and the password was stored using an older encryption that was reversible by this program that I downloaded and compiled on a Linux server...
I have read online about people who flashed their routerboard with OpenWRT in order to mount the flash filesystem and dig out the password that way, but it's not something I've ever looked into, and wouldn't recommend unless you really know what you're doing.