Open Mikrotik Backup File Repack (2025)

/export file=myconfig

After modifying a .dat file (e.g., using a hex editor or specific parsing scripts), you repack the folder back into a valid binary backup.

This article provides a complete, practical guide to working with MikroTik backup files. You will learn what these files contain, how to unpack and decrypt them, how to modify their contents, and how to repack them into valid backups that RouterOS can load.

Repacking refers to the workflow of:

python3 rsc_extract.py extracted/store --output config_dump/

To open a Mikrotik backup file using Notepad++: open mikrotik backup file repack

While "open and repack" is a powerful admin tool, it poses significant security risks if misused.

The core of "opening" and repacking a backup file lies in the open-source tool suite available on GitHub, specifically the (forked by users like rofl0r and BigNerd95 ). These Python scripts handle the heavy lifting of encryption, decryption, unpacking, and repacking for RouterOS v6.13 and above.

Encryption is strongly recommended for backups that leave the device, and RouterOS supports two encryption algorithms: aes-sha256 (the default) and rc4 , which is only available for compatibility with older RouterOS versions. /export file=myconfig After modifying a

The most reliable method involves using the project available on GitHub.

For more general analysis, the mikrotik-tools repository (by 0ki) provides additional decoding capabilities. It processes RouterOS backup files by reading their internal structure and extracting embedded files as .dat / .idx pairs, where each entry contains filename length, index data length, and content data length as 32‑bit little‑endian integers.

./ROSbackup.py unpack -i MikroTik-plaintext.backup -d unpacked_backup/ Repacking refers to the workflow of: python3 rsc_extract

To set up the environment (Windows example):

Convert an encrypted backup into a plaintext binary backup. ./ROSbackup.py decrypt -i MyBackup.backup -o MyPlaintext.backup -p yourpassword