Howto enable Secure Shell Loging (SSH) on a cisco router

In my day to day work, I come across many cisco routers and most of the time they are managed with a simple telnet. Well, thats ok.' Why not' you may wonder. Telnet is available on every system you can think of, but these are the 2007's, password sniffing is everywhere and a good system engineer should be prepared for it. So why not use SSH for your remote management tasks, your cisco supports it! (that is, if you are not using an IOS from the stone-age.) Difficult? No, not really. This is how you can enable SSH login on your cisco router.

First of all, you have to generate a key. This is done by issuing the command:

router#> conf t

router(config)#> crypto key gen <enter>

After this you should get a command prompt asking you how many bits you would like to use for this key. I always use 1024 as a key length. This is not too short and not too long for normal needs.
Now you need to create a user with a password.

router(config)#> username ciscoadmin priviledge 15 password ciscorulez

This should give you an account with username ciscoadmin with password ciscorulez. The next thing is to enable ssh on your virtual lines.

router(config)#> line vty 0 4

router(config-line)#> login local

router(config-line)#>transport ssh

router(config-line)#>priviledge 15

Thats it. Now you can use SSH or Putty or whatever ssh client you like to manage your cisco. When you login, you enter the enabled mode automatically.
Have (secure) fun!
Just another free security advise from the people of CaroTechnology!