Cisco ASA: Telnet access to ASA

Technology: Network Security
Area: Firewalls
Vendor: Cisco
Software: 8.X, 9.X
Platform: Cisco ASA

You can access the ASA appliance in a few ways. One way is telnet and ssh to Cisco ASA. To activate telnet access to ASA you need to have at least:

• username and password which will be used in the authentication process,
• AAA lists definition that specifies the source of authentication – they can be retrieved from the Radius server, TACACS+ server or LOCAL ASA database
  

One of the confusing elements for beginners is the console word. This is an old semantic (used always and has no meaning). So to enable telnet:

Define local username and password:
ASA#configure terminal
ASA(config)#username admin privilege 15 password some_password

Define AAA lists for telnet:

ASA(config)#aaa authentication telnet console LOCAL