The login to Harbor instance stopped working suddenly with this error LDAP Result Code 49 "Invalid Credentials"

Products

• VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition

Issue/Introduction

The login to Harbor instance stopped working suddenly and no more able to login with LDAP or with the local administrator.

Customer was getting the following errors both for local admin user and LDAP user

 2025-06-12T15:21:18Z [WARNING] [/core/auth/ldap/ldap.go:69]: ldap search fail: can not bind search dn, error: LDAP Result Code 49 "Invalid Credentials": 80090308: LdapErr: DSID-0C090597, comment: AcceptSecurityContext error, data 532, v4f7c

Resolution

In the local credentials replaced password character \u0026 with & and then the local admin user started working. Also after resetting the LDAP user password to without the character & it was also working.

For reference, This is the link for how to change the VMware Harbor registry admin password
https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleNumber=398555