Hacking is a strong word here. The process was much simpler, though it's still fascinating to see what AI can do with the right prompt and guidance. Likely, not many people would spend around an hour going through options and reading about secret sauces. But when you don’t have a solution, you try brute-force methods, and based on your stubbornness and patience, you reach a solution, although, frankly, I almost gave up at the end.

I’ve been building a home lab on and off for some time. My idea of the cluster was relatively simple: I needed a few pieces to start with - compute units, routing, and cables to connect them all.

For computing units, I had a few Raspberry Pis that were collecting dust in the box. Cables, I got from AliExpress. With the routing unit, on the other hand, I was a bit hesitant. I spent quite a while reading about gigabit switches, 2.5gbe, and 10gbe, comparing pricing and brands, but couldn’t find the one I liked.

Everything was put on hold until recently. One day, I remembered that exact router. Finally, I can make some progress, experiment, and once everything is ready, I can get a switch to make it right. The first idea that came to my mind:

“Let’s connect it in bridge mode ot my home network.”

I wanted to isolate the RPI cluster in the subnetwork and expose services through one of its nodes, serving as an entry point. I turned on the router and accessed the admin dashboard using the back-label credentials.

“This router has a very limited admin panel", I thought, seeing only a few options on the screen. WLAN settings, MAC Filtering, basic admin for reboot and factory reset, nothing else.

“It's OK, let me see if it supports some kind of bridge mode and if I can connect it to my home Wi-Fi," I thought, continuing to explore the dashboard.

The number of options was quite limited, and it didn't take time to find Enable Universal Repeater Mode, which works nicely with my connection idea.

Check. Save.

“403 Forbidden?”, I saw on the screen.

“I don't have permission to perform this action. I’m using the admin access. How come?”

The same for factory reset.

I went online and started doing more research to check whether I could flash it with the new software version, expecting a more robust admin panel and resolved permissions. Also, if I can flash this router with alternative software such as DD-WRT.

But eventually, I shifted my research to one of the chatbots. I started my chat with

“I have BT-762XR. When I do a factory reset in the UI, I get a 403. I think ISP flashed it with a custom OS, can I flash it with some other OS?”

The conversation went for almost an hour, me chatting with the bot and trying to suggest. I have to say, some of it is complete nonsense. 30-30-30 reset, reset through physical access (UART/TTL), telnet/SSH Access, the GPON “Secret Sauce”.

“Secret sauce? It’s not a cooking class”, I chuckled, while skipping the rest.

“This router from company Y” was the following message

Long message with a few passwords and the same instructions on how to flash the software. It suggested a few “admin” passwords before, although I was hoping that giving it a company name would steer its output, giving me what I need.

“ERROR: bad password!” Popped up on the screen after trying a few suggested options.

“Wait, this router is not from company A, it's from another one”. I realized. At that time, I was in my first apartment, as I remembered, and used another ISP.

“This device from X”, I typed.

Another long message, but this time with only one password: “YnQtcG9u”. I was running out of ideas if this wouldn’t work, and my patience was running out as well

As the bot told me late on “Nice! You’re officially in the “Captain’s Chair.”

Yes, I got in.

Excitement overwhelmed me, even though I still made no real progress on my task, but the sense of achievement gave me a boost of energy and, of course, dopamine. Now it’s a full-fledged admin access with all the options you might expect from the router.

After having real admin access, I could enable Universal Repeater Mode and connect to my home network. And it worked. The router connected to my home network, and RPIs could access the internet.

I’m the router's captain now.