Securing passwords CCNA lab
In this lab, we must protect and encrypt the credentials that are stored in cleartext on a Cisco apparatus.
Although the secret is already encrypted and stored as a hash value, the enable password is stored in plain text, and this poses a significant security risk to the production network hardware.
All credentials stored in clear text must be scrambled.
In this exercise, we will configure the secret as "cisco," and then we will encrypt all cleartext credentials.
We must examine the running config to check if all the cleartext credentials are encrypted.
After all the setups, verify your adjustments to complete the assignment.
— MD5-hashed privileged password
service password-encryption
— encrypts all plain-text passwords
show running-config
— verify passwords appear as hashes
password as an MD5 hash —
never readable in plain text.
service password-encryption
applies Cisco type-7 encoding
to all other passwords
(console, VTY, etc.).
Strong and secure credentials are vital for every IT infrastructure, as hundreds of successful hack attempts occur due to weak passwords and defenses.
A fragile password or frequent credential use is the most common reason for a security breach and the loss of millions of dollars every year.
Although passwords are stored inside the Cisco device database, we must make sure that we must repair every vulnerability in the system to prevent attacks and harden the security of our IT systems.