Web admin login fails. expected credentials are `admin` / `admin123`

Authority mappings

Which work roles, knowledge units, and EWU courses this error pattern touches. Hover for context, click to drill in.

What the message means

The scoring engine does `POST /login` with username `admin` and password `admin123` on `http://team<N>.ncaecybergames.org/`. The login is being rejected. At the 2026-03-14 regional only 2 of 13 teams got ANY WWW Content uptime. this is a **high-value free-points bug**.

Why the service is down

• Web app admin password is something other than `admin123`.
• Admin user has been disabled or renamed.
• Web app uses a different login endpoint than `/login`.
• DocumentRoot is serving a plain static page with no login mechanism.

Commands in order

1. 1. 1. Identify the web app

   copy ls -la /var/www/ ; ls -la /srv/www/ 2>/dev/null

   Expect

   A directory with PHP/Python/Ruby files

   Interpret and next

   Empty = Apache is serving the default debian page. You need to deploy the real app.
2. 2. 2. Guess the login endpoint

   copy curl -sI http://localhost/login http://localhost/admin http://localhost/wp-login.php

   Expect

   Any response other than 404 indicates the login path

   Interpret and next

   404 on all: check the app's routes file or README.
3. 3. 3a. WordPress? Reset admin password

   copy wp user update admin --user_pass=admin123 --path=/var/www/html --allow-root

   Expect

   Success: admin password updated

   Interpret and next

   If wp-cli not installed: `apt install -y wp-cli` or set via mysql directly.
4. 4. 3b. Flat-file PHP? Grep for the password hash

   copy grep -rn -E "password|passwd|admin" /var/www/ 2>/dev/null | head

   Expect

   Locates config or users file

   Interpret and next

   Edit the file directly. md5/sha1 hashes can be computed: `echo -n admin123 | md5sum`.
5. 5. 3c. Postgres-backed app?

   copy sudo -u postgres psql -d <webapp_db> -c "UPDATE users SET password_hash = crypt('admin123', gen_salt('bf')) WHERE username='admin';"

   Expect

   UPDATE 1

   Interpret and next

   If `crypt` fn missing: `CREATE EXTENSION pgcrypto;` first.
6. 6. 4. Verify admin login works

   copy curl -sd 'username=admin&password=admin123' http://localhost/login -o /dev/null -w '%{http_code}\n'

   Expect

   200 or 302 (302 = redirect after successful login)

   Interpret and next

   401/403 = still wrong. Check the app's logs for the actual rejection reason.

Decision tree

Answer each question to route to the right fix.

External references

• NCAE Cyber Games. official rules and scoring
• Apache HTTP Server 2.4 documentation

Other patterns on this service

• 2,555.6 failure Failed to connect to host
• 2,361.1 timeout Timeout
• 2,041.7 failure Website cannot be reached
• 690.3 failure [SSL] record layer failure (_ssl.c:1010)
• 444.4 failure Failed to detect correct content
• 15.3 failure admin was not able to request the login page