Re: [PEN-TEST] Router Password Recovery

[Randy Williams <randyw () SHORE NET>]

On Tue, 30 Jan 2001, Justin Shaffer wrote:

> There is a program called getpass that can decrypt the router password.
> However this requires that you can get into enable mode to retrieve the
> encrypted password.

Be careful about what's called "encrypted" here. Cisco's normal encryption
(referred to as "Cisco 7", for it's ridiculous 7-bit hash) is easily
cracked. Using an MD5-based hash (referred to as "enable secret"
passwords), the encryption is uncrackable. As mentioned before, you'll
have to reset the password.

A nice explanation of the two formats:

http://www.insecure.org/sploits/cisco.passwords.html

RW