Which command would you use to enter an unencrypted secret password for privilege exec access?

Which command would you use to enter an unencrypted secret password for privilege exec access?

• A. enable secret 7 password123
• B. enable secret 0 password123
• C. enable password 0 password123
• D. enable password 7 password123

Answer: (B)

This is about how Cisco IOS stores the password used to enter privileged EXEC mode and how to specify its encryption state. When configuring the enable password, you can indicate how the password should be stored by adding a leading digit. A leading 0 tells the device that the password is plaintext (unencrypted) in the configuration. So using enable secret 0 password123 sets the privileged-access password to password123 and stores it in clear text in the running-config. That’s exactly what “an unencrypted secret password” means in this context. Usually you’d omit the 0 so the device hashes the password (making it harder to read in the config). The other forms in the options attempt to use different encodings (like 7 or not using 0), which would not be unencrypted. For real security, avoid unencrypted passwords, but this is the form that yields an unencrypted secret password.

This is about how Cisco IOS stores the password used to enter privileged EXEC mode and how to specify its encryption state. When configuring the enable password, you can indicate how the password should be stored by adding a leading digit. A leading 0 tells the device that the password is plaintext (unencrypted) in the configuration. So using enable secret 0 password123 sets the privileged-access password to password123 and stores it in clear text in the running-config. That’s exactly what “an unencrypted secret password” means in this context.

Usually you’d omit the 0 so the device hashes the password (making it harder to read in the config). The other forms in the options attempt to use different encodings (like 7 or not using 0), which would not be unencrypted. For real security, avoid unencrypted passwords, but this is the form that yields an unencrypted secret password.