RE: Password "security" - was"Passwords with Lan Manager (LM) under Windows" and "Whitespace in passwords"

["dave kleiman" <dave () isecureu com>]

Pierre,

I beg to differ with you.   I have utilized our company lab to test many
cracking tools. (Cain, L0pht, and AccessData)  The fact that they allow
custom character sets does not work against certain portions of the extended
ASCII set, because there is discretion in the mappings.

Try this:

Open word and wordpad.  Try ALT-228 in both, see the difference. This is
where I have found the problem stems from, because it is only the ALT
characters that map differently that the "crackers" cannot crack.

Mark Burnett is writing new book "Perfect Passwords: Selection, Protection,
Authentication" maybe there will be some light shed on this subject from
there.


Regards,

Dave



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dufresne, Pierre [mailto:PIERRE.DUFRESNE () MESS GOUV QC CA]
> Sent: Tuesday, September 27, 2005 14:58
> To: pen-test () securityfocus com
> Subject: RE: Password "security" - was"Passwords with Lan
> Manager (LM) under Windows" and "Whitespace in passwords"
>
>
> I hope everybody following this thread is aware that whether
> any version of a cracking tool can crack or not non-printable
> characters is irrelevant.  If it can't, the authors could
> probably patch their tool very fast.
>
> As someone mentioned earlier, the game is now: how do you
> protect the hashes when a computer is lost or stolen?
>
> I work in a Windows environment. The only immediate measure I
> can think of is the use of SYSKEY with a password prompt.
> Could anyone provide me with other simple solution?  Thanks
>
>
> Note to moderator: may be it would be better to start a new
> thread with a subject like "hashes protection in Windows"
> Thanks
>
> Pierre
>
> > Hi Dave,
> >
> > Lepton's Crack can, for sure. I dunno if the version with
> non-printable
> > characters is 20040914 or 20040916 (the later is not online, I'm
> > afraid, I have it on a CD somewhere).
> > Just had a look at the CHANGES file:>
> >
> >     20040914/
> >     - Added support for any ASCII character (ie. also
> non-printable) in
> >       the charset and regex definition, via \0(octal), \x(hex),
> > \(decimal)
> >
> > Do a Google search for
> >
> >     password cracker "non printable" characters
> >
> > And have fun collating the results.
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Miguel
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: dave kleiman [mailto:dave () isecureu com]
> > Sent: 26 September 2005 15:00
> > To: 'Miguel Dilaj'
> > Cc: pen-test () securityfocus com
> > .Subject: RE: Password "security" - was"Passwords with Lan
> Manager (LM)
> under
> > Windows" and "Whitespace in passwords"
> >
> >
> > > Regarding "Whitespace in passwords", and as some people already
> > > mentioned, modern password cracking software (both commercial and
> > > free) can find non-printable chars, so space or ALT-whatever are
> > > going to be found anyway. Rainbow tables now tend to
> include space,
> > > but I still haven't heard of anyone producing a table for
> 0x00-0xff
> > > (0x0000-0xffff if you use extended unicode chars ;-)
> Applications CAN
> > > be broken by using strange characters, so YMMV.
> >
> >
> > Can you provide a list of those that have that ability, I
> will gladly
> > test them.
> >
> > The most popular ones cannot i.e. L0pht, Cain etc. See:
> > http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/88/312263
> >
> >
> > Dave
>
>
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