Re: news story and router passwords

[Mathias Wegner <mwegner () cs oberlin edu>]

> Sniffing router passwords including the "Enable" password for a Cisco router
> is easy.

        If the victim router isn't running an IOS version that supports
ssh or kerberos it is easy.  Of course, if the network admin is security
conscious, it gets a lot harder...

> it may not have been a Cisco router as their passwords can be physically
> reset at the router, therefore they may have been down for 11 hours but not
> 11 days.

        Even less time, in fact - once you know the procedure, it takes
almost no time at all.  When learning how to do so on a 2514, I think it
took me about 15 minutes from being locked out of enable to being running
with the orginal config register and using a new enable password.
Although the terminal directly hooked up to the console port is nice, too.



Mathias