Penetration Testing mailing list archives

Re: Brute-forcing cached Windows login password hashes


From: Carl Livitt <carllivitt () yahoo com>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2007 07:39:00 -0700


The hash algorithm is a salted MD4. It's impossible (ok, to be pedantic
it's mathematically infeasible) to use rainbow tables because of the
salting, so that leaves you with dictionary and brute-force.

The latest version of John and the MS Cache Hash patches are all
available from http://openwall.com/john/. I believe v1.7.2 is the latest
version.

Regards,
Carl


Ben Greenberg wrote:
Greetings all,
 
My question is regarding the encrypted password hashes that Windows stores in
the registry of the last 10 logins to a workstation.

I read the original white paper written by Arnaud Pilon and I've used his
cachedump tool to extract the password hashes from the registry. What I'm
wondering is what type of hash those passwords use. Is it straight MD4? I
know that each hash is salted with a machine-specific unique string. What I
am unclear on is what exactly the password hash is and how it can be
brute-forced. I know that there is a patch for John the Ripper, but every
mention I can find refers to a two year old version of John. Does anyone know
if the most recent version has this patch in it already? Also, is anyone
familiar with any rainbow tables for cracking these passwords? Are rainbow
tables possible for these hashes because of the salting?

Thanks all.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is sponsored by: Cenzic

Need to secure your web apps NOW?
Cenzic finds more, "real" vulnerabilities fast.
Click to try it, buy it or download a solution FREE today!

http://www.cenzic.com/downloads
------------------------------------------------------------------------


  

------------------------------------------------------------------------
This list is sponsored by: Cenzic

Need to secure your web apps NOW?
Cenzic finds more, "real" vulnerabilities fast.
Click to try it, buy it or download a solution FREE today!

http://www.cenzic.com/downloads
------------------------------------------------------------------------


Current thread: