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Crack Windows XP With... Windows 2000

Posted by timothy on from the if-you're-sitting-at-the-machine-anyhow dept.

An anonymous reader writes "According to this story seen on Brian's Buzz on Windows, access to a Windows 2000 CD is all that is needed to bypass all (well, most) Windows XP security features. An attacker can boot up XP and start the Windows 2000 Recovery Console which allows them to operate as any user, even Administrator, without requiring them to enter a password. This method even allows someone to copy files to removable media, something which normally the Administrator can't even do in the Recovery Console."

7 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. Not a big deal! by Longinus · · Score: 4, Informative
    You can do the same thing to Linux with a boot floppy. Also, Ars is carrying this story, but with the follow observations from readers:

    "Update: Some posters in the discussion thread point out this report may not be valid. One said that booting from a 2K CD did ask them for an administrator password and didnt let them in without it. Unfortunately, I dont have XP installed here to test it out before I posted."

    Either way I don't find this to be terribly upsetting because a) root access can be gained in a similar manner with Linux and b) if one is worried about security, they shouldn't being using Windows to begin with.

  2. umm no.. by Suppafly · · Score: 4, Informative

    An attacker can boot up XP and start the Windows 2000 Recovery Console which allows them to operate as any user, even Administrator, without requiring them to enter a password.

    Speaking from experience, the win2k recovery console makes you enter the admin password before it will let you do anything, unless they are using some version of the recovery console other than the one that comes with windows 2000 professional.

  3. Err... by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 4, Informative

    Why not just use one of *several* NT password recovery disks? They work on XP, as well. I've used this one to bust into several Win2k Pro machines we'd forgotten the password for.

    - A.P.

    --
    "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
  4. Physical access by Tyreth · · Score: 5, Informative
    I know that physical access makes a machine vulnerable in most cases. But that is because people don't password their bootloader, don't password their bios and disable boot disks.

    Take these precautions and you can be fairly secure with physical access. Add an encrypted file system so that if someone steals your hard disk you are safe. Then padlock the PC.

    Those are reasonable steps for a Linux machine (and I may have missed some, please let me know if i did). Now with a windows xp machine it looks like you also need to disable cdrom access. An unreasonable step.

    But am I misunderstanding this? Does this mean that there is a way for programs to be made to bypass Administrator password? If so why would this be limited to a windows 2000 disk? What's stopping someone from making a program that enters into Recovery Console, removing the need to be physically present or have a windows 2000 CD. Unless you actually have to boot from CD, but the article makes it sound like you can use the CD after the PC boots.

  5. Re:Knoppix by Proc6 · · Score: 5, Informative
    And let me be the first to say, Praise Jesus for Knoppix. I had a pair of mirrored disks created in Win2K Server. After the server exploded I put them into an XP Box (NTFS is NTFS right? Wrong.) - I used XP's disk admin to "reactivate disks", as soon as I did that, they became completely unreadable with either XP, or even in a different 2000 server at that point. Many various attempts at various things basically left me with NTFS disks I simply couldnt read with Win2000 or XP.

    I booted Knoppix. It saw the NTFS partitions fine. The disks appeared on the Knoppix desktop. I opened an FTP connection to another machine, copied off the important files, and was done.

    I will ALWAYS have a copy of Knoppix around.

    --

    I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!

  6. Wannabe slashdot lawyers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Have you -read- the DMCA? Do you think the primary purpose of Windows 2000 was to be a circumvention device of Windows XP (which wasn't even released yet?)

    (2) No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that--

    `(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

    `(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

    `(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person's knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

  7. No, No, NO!!! by alexburke · · Score: 5, Informative
    No, No, No.

    NO!

    You can launch the Recovery Console from CD (or hard drive -- hell, I have it installed on all my machines (winnt32 /cmdcons /unattend), but from within the Recovery Console you can ONLY log on to a Windows installation as Administrator (or whatever account was originally called Administrator if it was renamed), and you *do* require the password for it. NO OTHER ACCOUNT WILL WORK. (You are not even prompted for the user to log in as.)

    If you're stupid enough to leave the Administrator password blank on your box, then yes, you can just press Enter at the prompt and you're in -- however copying to a floppy, and access to directories Administrator doesn't have rights to access, are DISABLED by default unless you enable "Recovery Console: Allow floppy copy and access to all drives and all folders" (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy > Local Policies > Security Options). Note this doesn't remove the login requirement -- it only adds more access once you've logged into the Recovery Console.

    It's a moot point anyway -- even if you have the Welcome Screen enabled (where Administrator doesn't appear unless there are no other accounts defined), you can just hit Ctrl+Alt+Del twice to blow right past the Welcome Screen and pop up the normal GINA logon dialog, where you can log on as Administrator (or whoever), and whatever password (or blank, if you don't specify one during installation -- thank God Windows Server 2003 warns against an insecure Administrator password during Setup).

    ...

    Okay, I've somewhat calmed down now.

    Even though I'll bet 75% of posts to Slashdot are made from Windows machines, I find it unbelievable that trash like this makes the front page, let alone goes unrefuted for this long.

    Sheesh...

    *sigh*