ESXi 6.7.0 - Special Characters in the password issue

[Issam HACHEM]

Hello Everyone,

I have a serious issue (as with most security threats)!

I recently changed the password of my ESXi 6.7.0 VMware host using the web interface. I saved it in my password manager and copied and pasted it via TeamViewer from my personal Mac laptop to a Windows VM (where I accessed the VMware web interface).

I used the new password throughout the weekend. At times, I had login issues, but after a short while, I was able to log in again.

Today, however, I'm trying to connect, and it's not accepting the password-neither from the same laptop nor from other Windows PCs. It seems like special characters are causing problems. The password contains ^ ; ad {, and I suspect these characters might be the issue.

I've noticed that many special characters create login issues. For example, when I try to log in to the VMware Linux OS, the @ symbol isn't being entered correctly, and ^ seems to cause issues as well.

I believe my laptop copied and pasted the password in a format I can't replicate now.

Your help is needed-any ideas on how to resolve this?

Thank you for your follow-up.

issam

[a_p_]

Hard to say what exactly is causing the issue.

However, what you may try - unless already done - is to try logging in via SSH. Maybe this treats the special characters differently.

André

[Issam HACHEM]

Hey !

Thank you for your idea, but unfortunatly the ssh is disabled...

i have found out that } is not being typed on the linux vm! 

what could be replaced?

[Mik3]

Have you tried manually checking that the characters on your keyboard are being received as the right symbol?

I have been having issues when using different keyboards where the symbols do not match between what I type and what is received: # is sent as £, @ as " etc. I correct these in the keyboard map settings of my management position in the long run, but in a hurry I will manually swap which keys I press.

In the username field (where text is visible) I will check if the @ key is being received as an @ or not. This could help you check what is being seen by the host? Assuming you know what the password should be?

Mik3

[Issam HACHEM]

Thank you guys for your support, 

in fact we had to plug a keyboard directly physically into the server and the missing character was {, even when typed it was shown in the username field (for testing) but in the password field it took it.

Lesson learned no special characters for ESXi 6.7.0 (not even an @)!!!

regards,

ih.

[mrigesh rajbhandari]

Hi Issam,

I'm trying to restrict the use of certain special characters (such as <, >, and $) in the password for the [e-mail] account. I attempted to enforce this restriction via the vCenter GUI by modifying the password policy, but it doesn't seem to allow blacklisting specific characters.

Is there a way to explicitly disable or forbid the use of certain special characters in SSO passwords - either via SSH to the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) or using CLI tools? I'm open to using any available command-line methods or configurations outside the GUI.

Thank you

M

[Issam HACHEM]

Dear Mrigesh,

I couldn't change the format, the pasword in fact had { and ^ as special characters, the system takes them but the display is borken when used on the ESXi CLI interface.

To solve the issue, I had to travel to the server center and use a keyboard physically on the server, typing the pasword wasn't straight forward, because when using these caracteres nothing was appearing after them, but i kept on using the right order of letters (the password) and it worked...

Once logged in, i have changed the password immediatly by using only letters and numbers, unfortunately...

I haven't used any command line to change the password. just the normal interface.

I hope that will solve your issue, 

Best,