We've been locked out of our UTM appliance - help

Question

Hi all, 
 
 Firstly apologies, we're new to these devices and have little or no experience of them. 
 We have a Sophos UTM device (Software that seems to have been installed on a Dell server?). It is used to terminate a site to site VPN between our branch office in Thailand and our European datacentre. We used to access the device from the local LAN on port 4444, however yesterday the VPN went down and we can no longer access the UTM web portal. The device is responding to ping, but no other ports whatsoever. 
 
 Today I received an email from the Thai supplier asking for our renewal PO. Now I may be a little na&iuml;ve here, but as we cant log into the device to update the license, I can see how we can renew it. He is now saying that he can do it remotely. 
 This looks to me like we are being held to ransom. 
 Does anyone know if it is normal for access to a UTM device to be blocked when the license expires? I'm concerned that this local Thai supplier is behaving unethically.

giomoda · Accepted Answer

Yes, most definitely. 
 It could be a malfunction though. Have you tried rebooting your device? 
 If they in fact locked you out by removing you local network from the WebAdmin allowed networks you can also bypass that: https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/115462 
 Unfortunately it will require that you know the root password and have SSH access, otherwise you'll need to do this at the local console. If SSH is disabled or you are also locked out of it (SSH is not enable by default and if they locket you out of WebAdmin they would also lock you out of SSH), then you need to locally access the console to restore your access or reset your root password. 
 Sorry, no easy way around this. 
 Regards, 
 Giovani