Decrypting Cisco type 7 passwords on a router

It is common knowledge that Cisco type 7 passwords are not secure.
A quick search on Google brings up plenty of websites that will crack the passwords for you, and a few scripts\tools you can run locally to get the type 7 password.
You can also decrypt the password on the router.
The aim of this blog is to describe the process for decrypting a type 7 password on router using just IOS commands.
First create a password on your router which you want to crack.
For my example I have created the password "cisco".
So the running configuration looks like this;

password 7 1511021F0725

To decrypt you password, first enter global configuration, then enter the command "key chain test" followed by "key 1" then enter "key-string 7 1511021F0725" as shown below;

As you can see from the screen shot above, to show the password use the "show key chain test" command which will decrypt your type 7 password key-string.

Remember when creating password on a router to use the "secret" keyword to ensure MD5 is used as type 7 passwords are not designed to be secure!
For further information, please refer to www.cisco.com