The 5 is Cisco IOS’ way of knowing that this is an MD5 hashed password (there are other algorithms). That’s because Cisco uses the same FreeBSD crypto libraries as the rest of the world (except Microsoft they invent wheels). If you’re familiar with Unix, BSD, or Linux password files, then this whole thing looks familiar. Go to your search provider.Įnable secret 5 $1$mERr$Q4J3cxRImm68KXqMDsLDs/ Cisco has documentation on password reset/recovery. Point is, somehow get this hashed password. You may also have archived configs or other devices that have the same password. it requires physical access and for “service password-recovery” to be enabled (the current default). There are ways to dump the password hash. Wait a minute, we’re not even going to be able to get that far since we can’t do a show run on the device, because that requires privileged exec permissions and you forgot that password. So what I present here is a method for actually recovering the MD5 hashed “Enable” or user passwords through a dictionary attack (and physical access).įirst, let us look at the actual password as the IOS stores it: enable secret 5 $1$mERr$Q4J3cxRImm68KXqMDsLDs/ It doesn’t matter why, but maybe when you recover it, take note of it this time. So you have a cisco device that is password protected, perhaps it is a mission critical core device and you lost the password.
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