Re: What to do when you forget your cisco LD password...

[jbash () CISCO COM (John Bashinski)]

>         If you're like me, you've got a lot of passwords to remember, and
> sometimes, well, we forget.  There's good news, though!  For a limited time
> only, you can enable on your cisco LocalDirector with the magic ^C password.
>
>         I noticed this on a 1.6.3 LocalDirector where I mistyped the enable
> password by mistake and hit ^C to start over, but I didn't have to, took me
> right in, and let me make my configuration changes.  Later experimentation
> showed that you don't even have to type in a partially invalid password, ^C
> alone seems to do the trick in all cases we tried.

I am not a LocalDirector expert and don't have access to a test machine,
but I just checked this with the Those Who Know. I am informed that
control-C will work as an enable password only if you haven't actually
set a password. In fact, *any* string will work if you haven't set a
password. If you've set an enable password on the box, control-C will
not work. This was verified by testing on a 1.6.3 LocalDirector.

If control-C worked for you on a machine with a password properly set,
*please* contact me directly with details of how you configured it.

You're right, however, that you shouldn't let people you don't trust log
in to your equipment in the first place.

                                        -- John B.