Is Telnet password, Enable secret or Enable Password Safe? Quite Obviously NO!!!!

While Telnetting is one of the simplest and basic tools to gain remote access to any of the devices on the network, it can be easily cracked by ane who gains access to your network either from inside or from outside.

Telnet requires a 'line vty 0 15" password to be set on the device before another host can telnet into that device. It places the host trying to telnet to the remote host into the user mode, from where it further requires to enable password and enables secret to move into the "enable or the privilege mode". Both the line vty and the 'enable password' or 'enable secret' can be sniffed through the Wireshark.

Using Wireshark the captured packets flowing between the devices, and analyzing the packets gives us the clear unencrypted form of as depicted in the screenshots below.

For experimental purposes, I used "CCNA" as a password on "line vty " and "CCNP" as the enable secret password.

Note: This demonstration and article are just for understanding purposes, any discussions and questions are more than welcome to be discussed.