Any way to decrypt my password?

[colindahms]

Here's my situation: I have 9 Linksys/Cisco switches, and I changed the password I use for all of them but failed to write down the new password.  For reasons which are unimportant here, most of these switches can't be rebooted on a whim to reset the password.  I did swap out one of the live switches (a Linksys SRW2048) with a spare and retrieved the configuration which contains the encrypted password thus:

username admin password [128-bit hash] level 15 encrypted

What I want to know is, can this be decrypted to retrieve my password so that I can access my switches without causing a network outage of disastrous proportions?

Thanks ever so much for any help on this.

- Colin

[David Hornstein]

Hi Colin,

How can you get into the configuration file during a boot up, to even see the heavily encrypted password, good question.

I found the following at another site, and it is untested, and have no idfea if it works,  but destroys any saved password;

Although this method is not so well documented, there is a way to reset the switch password for most Linksys SRW models (it also proves a bit of a security risk if you think of it from a hackers point of view). You will require a DB9F > DB9F Straight through serial cable to complete this process.

step 1 After connecting the serial cable to switch and system you’ll need to open a program such as Hyperterminal or Putty and enter the following settings:

• Bits per second: 38400
• Data bits: 8
• Parity: None
• Stop bits: 1
• Flow Control: None

step 2 Connect power to the switch. After a couple of seconds you should see the prompt ‘Autoboot in 2 seconds – press RETURN or Esc. to abort and enter prom.’

PRESS Esc at this point – a second too soon, or a second too late and you’ll miss it. It’s a case of fastest reactions win!

Step 3  The menu (shown below) will open – select option 3 to reset the password to null and then select option 5 to exit and continue the boot sequence

4) Once the logon prompt appears enter the username admin and leave the password field blank (either from the console or web interface)

5) Change the password to the desired setting

There you have it, password reset. As you can see it’s very easy to gain access to the switch in this way, so as usual it’s always worth keeping your physical hardware away from harms way or prying eyes.

regards Dave

[colindahms]

I followed the beginning of that procedure to bypass the password from the console port, but resetting the password doesn't help; I need to find out what the password is, to gain access to the switches I *can't* reboot.  If I can't do that, there'll be he11 toupee.