Re: news story and router passwords

[Ralph Moonen <ralph () TINK ORG>]

At 16:35 12-10-00 +0200, Vitaly Osipov wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I think everybody knows that media reporting on hackers and their tools is,
> ehm, very improper :)
> I've read one article recently
>  http://www.denverpost.com/business/biz1012d.htm  ) in which it is clamed
> that some hacker after sniffing router password changed it and made
> *something* after that they were not able to recover that password. Have
> somebody heard of such problems (it looks like they were using cisco,
> because they say  - "If this guy posts how he actually did this, the whole
> Internet's wide open." )? AFAIK ciscos have password recovery procedures, at
> least those which are not low-end.
>
> Frankly speaking I'd suppose that they just did not back up their config :)
> (because it looks like they even did not use access-lists etc.)

Don't believe anything they write. If he sniffed the enable password, he
could easily
change the password and store it in the config file encrypted.
The admin would then have to reboot the box and from the console, enter the
debug mode
whence it is possible to change anything. Including unknown passwords.

--Ralph