NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.

Forum Discussion

emattheis's avatar
emattheis
Aspirant
Jan 18, 2023

CM2000 Event Log Export Encryption

I just got a CM2000 to replace another perfectly good modem that Comcast starting having compatibility issues with. I'm keeping an eye on the event logs to see if I see any of the same issues show up on the new modem (so far, they don't). Copying data out of the web console on my old modem was a pain, so I was excited to see the export button on the event log page. Unfortunately, the export is encrypted and there are no instructions how to decrypt it. What is the purpose of that? How can I decrypt the file to see what's in it? I'm very curious now, because the export produced a 217 KB file despite the fact that the web page shows no log entries.

Features
Security

9 Replies

  • FURRYe38's avatar
    FURRYe38
    Guru - Experienced User
    Jan 18, 2023

    What is the file format of the exported file? 

    So opening this in notepad or a text editor comes back garbled? 

     

    • emattheis's avatar
      emattheis
      Aspirant
      Jan 18, 2023

      When you click the export button, you get a confirmation popup:

       

       

      If you confirm, you get a progress bar:

       

       

      The resulting file is named NETGEAR_xxxxxxxxxxxx.bin (where xxxxxxxxxxxx is the MAC address of the modem) and opening in a text editor shows nothing human-readable (at least, not in any language I recognize).

      • FURRYe38's avatar
        FURRYe38
        Guru - Experienced User
        Jan 18, 2023

        Well probably the text that says "only for NETGEAR analysis" probably means once it's sent to NG, they only have the ability to decode and review the information. and the .bin file so this would be a encrypted binary file. So only NG can decode it. Only needed for troubleshooting extreme issues.