A Type 5 hash of an 8-character complex password (upper, lower, digit, symbol) has ~6 quadrillion combinations. At 60 GH/s, an attacker would need ~28 hours to exhaust the full keyspace. But with targeted wordlist attacks, that drops to .

Cisco Password 5, also known as Type 5 password encryption, is a cryptographic algorithm used to encrypt passwords on Cisco devices. It uses a combination of a salt value and a hash function to protect passwords from being read in plain text. When a password is set on a Cisco device using Type 5 encryption, it is hashed and then stored in the device's configuration.

In many hashing schemes, the salt is a secret. In Cisco Type 5, the salt is . It is stored in clear text within the configuration file alongside the hash.