Full Disclosure mailing list archives

RE: Senior M$ member says stop using passwords completely!


From: "Thomas G O'Reilly" <tgoreilly () cmsenergy com>
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 11:46:37 -0400

Actually in a Win2003 domain the LM hashes are eliminated by default.  In 
a 2000 domain you can add the NoLMHash value to 
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\LSA  This prevents the 
old LM hashes from being stored from the next time passwords are changed.






"Todd Towles" <toddtowles () brookshires com>
Sent by: full-disclosure-admin () lists netsys com
10/19/2004 04:42 PM

 
        To:     "Pavel Kankovsky" <peak () argo troja mff cuni cz>, 
<full-disclosure () lists netsys com>
        cc: 
        Subject:        RE: [Full-disclosure] Senior M$ member says stop using passwords 
completely!


I was under the understand that passwords of over 14 characters were
stored with a more secure hash, therefore 14 characters passwords were
harder to crack, due to the more secure hash. Windows will create two
different hashes for passwords shorting than 14 characters, I do
believe.

Just use a non-printable character in your password and cracking is
useless...if they crack it, they can't read what they cracked. ;) 

-----Original Message-----
From: full-disclosure-admin () lists netsys com 
[mailto:full-disclosure-admin () lists netsys com] On Behalf Of 
Pavel Kankovsky
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 2:21 PM
To: full-disclosure () lists netsys com
Subject: Re: [Full-disclosure] Senior M$ member says stop 
using passwords completely!

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004, Frank Knobbe wrote:

It's a nice recommendation of MS to make (to use long passphrases 
instead of passwords). But I don't consider 14 chars a "passphrase".
Perhaps they should enable more/all password components to 
handle much 
longer passwords/phrases.

A passphrase consisting of 7 words and 12 bits of entropy per 
a word is as guessable as a password with 14 characters and 6 
bits of entropy per a character. You get 84 bits of total 
entropy in both cases.

The only advantage of passphrases is that lusers might find 
long random sequences of words easier to remember than long 
random sequences of characters.

(But wait: 12 bits of entropy per a word--this is equivalent 
to a uniform choice of one word out of 4096. 4 thousand? That 
might exceed an average luser's vocabulary by an order of 
magnitude! ;>)

--Pavel Kankovsky aka Peak  [ Boycott 
Microsoft--http://www.vcnet.com/bms ] "Resistance is futile. 
Open your source code and prepare for assimilation."

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