How to get the configurations of the firewall based on the exporting EXP (Settings) file?

The firewall appliance settings (.exp) file is encoded. This article explains how to decode it into a readable text file 

Resolution for LINUX 

In this example the settings file has been renamed in "settings.exp", it is not mandatory to rename the settings file.

Under the Terminal application, run:

base64 -d -i settings.exp | sed 's/&/\n/g' > config.txt

base64 command will decode the settings.exp file into config.txt file.

The command has not output, but if no errors are displayed means that the conversion succedeed.
Now, in the same directory of the settings file the file "config.txt" has been generated. 



The file contains the decrypted settings.

Resolution for Windows

Open the settings file with Notepad++ and reach the end of the file.
Here there are two && that must be deleted.

Remove the two && and save the file.

Then open a Command Prompt (CMD) issuing the command:

certutil -decode "sonicwall-TZ 470-SonicOS 7.1.2-7019-R6288-2025-01-02T18_19_52.499Z.exp" settings.txt

certutil command will decode the "sonicwall-TZ 470-SonicOS 7.1.2-7019-R6288-2025-01-02T18_19_52.499Z.exp" file into settings.txt file. 

Open the geneated settings.txt file with Notepad++
Hit CTRL+F to open the Find Popup and on "Replace" TAB select "Extended" in Search Mode.
Then, insert in "Find what" & and in "Replace with" \n
Finally click on Replace All.



During the replacement action Notepad++ may be unresponsive. Wait for the operation to finish. 

After a while Notepad++ will show tje number of all the replaced occurrences.


Settings file is now in a readable format.