Cisco Enable Secret - 5 Decrypt Hot!

If you’ve ever looked at a Cisco router configuration and seen a line like this:

If the hashes match, they have found the password. cisco enable secret 5 decrypt

You might have found yourself Googling

Cisco deliberately chose hashing to prevent anyone — even root on the device — from recovering the plaintext password. That’s a security feature, not a bug. In a properly secured environment, you shouldn’t need to decrypt it. You should: If you’ve ever looked at a Cisco router

When you authenticate, the device does decrypt the stored hash. Instead: cisco enable secret 5 decrypt