We Have Lost The “wasadmin” Account Password!

If you have lost the “wasadmin” account password or any other local WebSphere account, there is a rather simple way to recover it.

Just connect to the server where WebSphere Deployment Manager is running, via RDP or SSH, depending on the OS of the server, and open the “security.xml” file located under “<WebSphere_Installation_Directory>/AppServer/profiles/<Deployment_Manager_Profile>/config/cells/<Cell_Name>” for example “/opt/IBM/WebSphere/AppServer/profiles/ic-dmgr01/config/cells/ic-cell01”.

After that just search for the account name, for which you would like get the password, in the same line you should find the attribute “password”:

Then just copy the value of the “password” attribute, now we need to decode the xor encoded password. For that I am usually using the following Website: https://strelitzia.net/wasXORdecoder/wasXORdecoder.html

Just paste the encoded text and click the “decode” button, after that you should have the password.