Prerequisites

The workaround requires the following:

• Shell access to the MetaDefender Email Security

• Read/write access to the configuration database (tipically C:\Program Files\OPSWAT\Metadefender Email Security\data\config.db.sqlite on Windows)

• An SQLite client application (e.g. sqlite3 from https://www.sqlite.org/download.html) installed locally on the server

• A utility to calculate SHA-256 hash values (e.g. CertUtil on Windows) installed locally on the server

  Do not use online tools to calculate the hash value as it would result in the disclosure of the clear text password.

Password reset steps

1. Stop MetaDefender Email Security

2. Connect to the database

   Connect as a user that has read and write permissions on the database (tipically Administrator on Windows). Using unprivileged accounts may give unexpected results.

   Windows example (sqlite3)

   > sqlite3.exe "C:\Program Files\OPSWAT\Metadefender Email Security\data\config.db.sqlite"

3. Query the settings of the admin user

   Example (sqlite3)

   sqlite> SELECT settings FROM users WHERE name="admin";

4. Save the result settings string for later use

   Example

   {"email":"admin@localhost","password":"f7fe7874618b3468c262698bb46fd499421b38026a42c7ae0504c0cd8a097360","salt":"2ad530aa56844126860783e93552ccba"}

5. Take the salt part from the settings string (2ad530aa56844126860783e93552ccba in the example above) and append it with the new password (NewPassword123 in the examples below)

   Example

   2ad530aa56844126860783e93552ccbaNewPassword123

6. Calculate the hash of the salted new password

   Windows example

   > copy con saltedpassword.txt

    

   2ad530aa56844126860783e93552ccbaNewPassword123^Z

    

   1 file(s) copied.

    

    

   > powershell get-filehash -algorithm sha256 saltedpassword.txt

    

   Algorithm Hash Path

   --------- ---- ----

   SHA256 ECE2B0DD63F31A6571C083742305A219D36143AF3F60660F21677263FE57C96A C:\saltedpassword.txt

7. The result is the salted hash value of the new password

   Example

   ece2b0dd63f31a6571c083742305a219d36143af3f60660f21677263fe57c96a

8. Replace the password part in the settings string with the salted hash value of the new password

   Example

   {"email":"admin@localhost","password":"ece2b0dd63f31a6571c083742305a219d36143af3f60660f21677263fe57c96a","salt":"2ad530aa56844126860783e93552ccba"}

9. Update the database and set the new settings value for the user

   Do not use the password and salt values of the example below in a production environment!

   Example (sqlite3)

   sqlite> UPDATE users SET settings='{"email":"admin@localhost","password":"ece2b0dd63f31a6571c083742305a219d36143af3f60660f21677263fe57c96a","salt":"2ad530aa56844126860783e93552ccba"}' WHERE name = "admin";

10. Quit the SQLite client and start MetaDefender Email Security