Extracting PPPoE login details from a locked ISP router

There are many internet service providers (ISPs) around the world that offer fiber internet connections, but sometimes you cannot access your PPPoE user details. This can happen if your ISP does not allow you to use your own router, or if you don’t have the login details for your router.

There are ways to try and access this information, but it can be difficult due to security measures put in place by ISPs.

One solution is to temporarily replace the fiber-copper adapter with a computer running Linux, which can act as a PPPoE server. This will allow the Linux box to record the PPPoE login information, and present it to you later.

You can find a script to do this on the website of the original author, but, while it works well, it is written in Spanish and might be a little challenging.

I have made a few changes to the script to make it both easier to manage, and in English. This is a link to my modified script.

To use the script, download it and run it on a live Ubuntu Linux system. You can use a live USB/ISO to avoid doing any changes on your persistent system.

To download the script, run from a terminal window on your live Ubuntu:

wget https://github.com/ezaton/scripts/raw/main/pppoe-hijack/get-login.py

and then just run it:

python3 get-login.py

You will be asked some questions during the script’s runtime, such as the ISP you are using, and you will be prompted to connect the computer to the router’s WAN port. The script should be able then to retrieve the PPPoE login details for you.

Note that the script was modified to be able to run on multiple Linux distributions, however – on Oracle Enterprise Linux 9 the script will not work, due to a missing ppp-dev package.

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to post them here