Slashdot Mirror


Swiss Researchers Exploit Windows Password Flaw

Bueller_007 writes "CNET is carrying an article about a new (albeit simplistic) method used to hack alphanumeric Windows passwords in a matter of seconds, rather than minutes. To blame is a 'weakness in Microsoft's method of encoding passwords.' According to the authors, the same method, when used on Mac OS X, Unix and Linux boxes, however, could require either 4,096 times more memory or 4,096 times longer." A few more details: Mister.de writes "As an example we have implemented an attack on MS-Windows password hashes. Using 1.4GB of data (two CD-ROMs) we can crack 99.9% of all alphanumerical passwords hashes (2 37 ) in 13.6 seconds whereas it takes 101 seconds with the current approach using distinguished points. We show that the gain could be even much higher depending on the parameters used. This was found at the Cryptography and Security Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL)."

2 of 519 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This is why... by t0ny · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Microsoft has used two encoding schemes, also known as hashing functions, to encrypt passwords. The first, known as LANManager or LANMan, was used by Windows 3.1, 95, 98, Me and early NT systems to secure passwords that were used to connect to early Windows networks.

    OMFG, can you dig up a report based on something current? Its for the LanMan flaws that MS switched to Active Directory. Get a clue, this has been fixed for several years, and is REALLY old news.

    --

    Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.

  2. Re:Company Memo: New security procedures. by superyooser · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    Norma McCorvey, a.k.a. Jane Roe, did not "change her mind"! That would imply that she had once supported abortion. Norma was lied to about what abortion is when she had hers. At the time of the case, she did not know what "abortion" meant.

    Norma was a poor, homeless, sexually-abused, and very naive woman who was mercilessly exploited by abortion activists and corrupt lawyers. The facts of abortion and abortionist practices, both of which violated several existing statutes and Constitutional tenets, were never discussed during the case.

    The illegal basis for the decision apparently was that a woman has the right to choose -- not to control her own body -- but to destroy another person's body. Normally, this is called murder or manslaughter. In one fell swoop, however, these rogue judicial ideologues trampled across the Constitutional separation of Court and Congress and created a new law -- a law that flew in the face of well over 300 years of American legal precedent (going back to colonial governments) that outlawed the willful killing of an innocent human being. The court here usurped a power reserved exclusively for the legislative branch, and in doing so, contradicted thousands of federal, state, and local laws of every municipality in the country, and likewise, contradicted the majority beliefs and will of both the citizens and their elected representative legislators.

    Because of this, plus the numerous deceptions that occurred during the proceedings, as well as the invalidity of the very basis of the case and the misrepresentation and exploitation of the plaintiff by her own legal "advocates" means that the decision of Roe v. Wade has absolutely no legal basis.

    You have a right to choose as long as the exercise of that right does not infringe on the rights of others. Abortion completely annihilates all the rights of another person, including that person's right to live. There is empirical scientific proof très beaucoup that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that abortion is the destruction of a living human being. There is not a shred of science to assuage the blood-guilt of abortionists. Their 30-year legacy stands in history as a holocaust*, in which these self-proclaimed champions of civil rights have exterminated more than 35,000,000 living, pre-born babies (without their consent, obviously, nor with due process to convict them guilty of a crime) and caused tremendous emotional devastation and physical pain to the women they claim to be fighting to help.

    Read the affidavit. It's a quick and eye-opening read.

    * The usage of the term "holocaust" in reference to widespread abortion has been sanctioned by Jewish survivors of the Nazi-inflicted holocaust.