Slashdot Mirror


L0phtCrack (v6) Rises Again

FyreWyr writes "L0phtCrack — now 12 years old — used to be a security 'tool of choice' for black hats, pen-testers, and security auditors alike — that is, until it was sold by L0pht to @stake, then Symantec, to be released and subsequently dropped as LC 5. As an IT security consultant, I used this tool to regularly expose vulnerabilities or recover data when there were few other options available. Eventually, I let it go as tech evolved away. Now, after being returned to its original developers, version 6 was released this week with fresh features: support for 64-bit multiprocessors, (current) Unix and Windows operating systems, and a number of other features, including enhanced handling of NTLM password hashes and support for rainbow tables. Interested parties, especially consultants, will find this shiny new version sports a hefty price tag. It raises doubts in my mind whether it can effectively compete with open source alternatives that go by similar names, but as I found earlier versions so useful, its re-emergence seems worth the mention."

27 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Symantec has a knack of spoiling even the best of by freedom_india · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's face it: Anything that symantec touches turns into worthless and junk.
    Symantec is like the Anti-Midas of technology.
    They touched Norton and poof, a great tool was turned into the worst nightmare of all times.
    Now they are releasing the ultimate hackers' tool under their umbrella.
    If i was anything like ParMaster, i would run as fast as i could and as far as away from it.

    --
    "Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
  2. Open Source Competitors by fv · · Score: 5, Informative

    When the submitter referenced "open source alternatives that go by similar names", he was referring to ophcrack. Similar features are also available from Cain and Abel, and John the Ripper.

    I maintain a list of top password crackers and sniffers as part of my SecTools.Org site.

    While the submitter is correct that they have much more competition now, I still wish to congratulate the former L0pht guys on the new release!

    1. Re:Open Source Competitors by makinsky · · Score: 2, Informative

      OMG... it's fyodor!
      Praise the almighty creator of nmap !!!

  3. Re:Symantec has a knack of spoiling even the best by SchizoStatic · · Score: 3, Informative

    True to that. They slaughtered my favorite windows firewall sygate :(

    --
    https://www.speakservers.com/
  4. Who remembers it? by Ektanoor · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Loph who?...
    What cracks?
    12 years? That's pretty old stuff. Who needs it?
    Does it work on iPhone?
    Can I crack my XBox with it?

    Really people, I bet that 90% of slashdotters are still wondering what is L0phtCrack and how can you eat it.
    I waited for 10 minutes. No replies. Mute reaction.

    L0phtCrack, and their creators, the "L0pht Heavy Industries" group, were once shinning stars inside the Hacker community. Now who remembers them? There are not even scriptkiddies around, all society is a scripkiddy.

    L0pht people also created the "tool that never got its true name" - "netcat", which can only be found in most *nix systems as "nc". Pretty great tool, just two weeks ago I used it, once again, for more than 11 years.

    Hail to you guys, happy to see you around.

    And Hail to the Cow!

    1. Re:Who remembers it? by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 3, Funny

      I bet that 90% of slashdotters are still wondering what is L0phtCrack and how can you eat it.

      Actually I was wondering how I could smoke it...

    2. Re:Who remembers it? by Ektanoor · · Score: 2, Interesting

      On which of the languages I know?
      Sorry, but sincerly, it is pretty hard to remember the grammar of some 9 languages I know. And I am not taking into account programming.

      More. It is pain to take into account the grammar of each language, if you are reading almost simoultaneously three or four languages.

      Yes, it's a handicap I cannot stick into a specific grammar. But I can read on several languages and write, in a possible comprehensible manner, on them.

      Now I know several jerks who are too sticked to grammar, make a whole fuss out of it and are only able to create a complete nonsense out of a text. If I note that I had these cases on juridical documents, which decided will someone go to the gallows or not... I do prefer my horrible grammar.

      ModDown offtopic but I get pretty mad when people try to teach grammar not by the error but by playing smarties.

    3. Re:Who remembers it? by cbiltcliffe · · Score: 2, Informative

      You living on Earth, not in Nutziland.

      Huh?

      I thought the two terms were interchangeable....

      --
      "City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
    4. Re:Who remembers it? by Allador · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Dude, seriously. Its nice and all that you like to brag about multiple languages. Good for you.

      But do you really know a language if you cannot communicate effectively with it?

      Case in point, your post that I'm responding to.

      It's fairly badly broken English. I've read worse, but its not good.

      For example, how do you get 'too sticked to grammer', and what the hell does that mean? Is it some kind of dom/sub foreplay?

      What is a 'juridical' document? Sounds kinky.

      And I dont even have a clue what this is supposed to mean:

      ... when people try to teach grammar not by the error but by playing smarties.

      Now there are alot of people who arent native english speakers here on /. And generally they only get minor grief, and only from idiots. You should have ignored the idiots. But oh no, you had to go get arrogant about it, and blame it on how you're so smart you are reading /. simultaneously in six languages including binary.

      Bottom line, if you want to be able to be understood, and engage in conversation with people, then slow down a bit and at least try to make your posts intelligible. The couple of your posts I've read on this story are nearly incomprehensible. Strangely enough, the most clear you've been was in your bragging about how many languages you know, so that tells me you can speak clearly in English when you want to.

  5. Re:Am I missing something?? by Bert64 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I doubt a cracker would use this, most of the features listed seem to appeal to non technical management types...
    Crackers (and for that matter more technical people other than crackers) are more likely to use john the ripper, which runs on more platforms, supports more cipher types, supports clustering etc.

    Incidentally, the talk about "pre computed dictionary files" is a ridiculous idea, you turn a small dictionary, say 100 words, into a huge file consisting of 100 * * , and you end up storing thousands of hashes for salts not being used in the passwords you're trying to crack..
    Yes sure, some password types are not salted, but these types are also generally very weak and a modern cpu may be able to compute them faster than it can spool from disk.

    --
    http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
  6. Missing everything by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sigh. Do you...do... IT? It seems like a "cracker tool" to you? What the hell are you, the FBI raiding Steve Jackson games 15 years ago because you're too inept to understand the difference between a concept and using it criminally?

    You understand that even tools put to ill use by criminals have legitimate purposes right? Or are you in the ban sporks because they can be used in spork crimes camp? </flame> You deserved that.

    L0phtcrack--cracks--passwords. There's nothing inherently wrong with that. Valid reasons include:
      * lack of backups and a need to recover an existing password
      * testing employee passwords for compliance with policy and strength requirements with authorization
      * being paid to pen-test a system
      * Just freakin' wanting to run it at home to see how fast such tools 'really work'
      * Discovering passwords used on a compromised system (it may help reveal passwords used in encrypted files with naive rootkits)
      * General Proof of concept against poor password implementations--early versions of l0phcrack hit some systems a lot faster than others as I recall

    Can we stop with this namby crap that the tool is somehow used and written by 'bad people' is 'bad' itself?

  7. Re:Let me be the first to say: by Jurily · · Score: 4, Informative

    Attention Overseas Customers
    As required by law, L0phtcrack is subject to United States export controls. L0phtCrack may not be downloaded or otherwise exported or re-exported outside the United States. By downloading or using L0phtCrack, you are agreeing to the foregoing and all applicable export control laws. See disclaimer for more details.

    What kind of sorry-ass black-hat tool is this?

  8. Re:Am I missing something?? by appleguru · · Score: 2, Informative

    Precomputed hashes are useless unless they are *sorted* then they become useful. If you have a sorted precomputed hash table for, say, all 10 character passwords and you have a hash then you can *instantly* locate the matching hash from your table and retrieve the password provided it is 10 or fewer characters. Brute forcing would take *much* longer, even on modern CPUS. With hard drive space as cheap as it is these days, huge presorted precomputed hash tables are very feasible.. this is largely the reason why salts are used, as they effectively increase the password length to the point where using a table is infeasible.

  9. Re:Am I missing something?? by Fulcrum+of+Evil · · Score: 3, Informative

    these types are also generally very weak and a modern cpu may be able to compute them faster than it can spool from disk.

    The way a rainbow table works is to generate a reverse mapping for your password, so if it's in the table, it's one index lookup away. Kind of hard to beat that, unless you're cracking WEP or something.

    --
    "We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
  10. Any GPU Support? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    What would make a real killer for cracking would be a combination of Cain and Abel + GPU Support. Imagine having a ten/hundred fold increase in hashes per second from utilizing a Nvidia / ATI card.

    You do have other programs for this kind of work, but the price tag I've seen so far would make my stomach turn.

  11. Re:Symantec has a knack of spoiling even the best by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Symantec is like the Anti-Midas of technology.

    To be fair, Midas' touch didn't really work out too well either...

  12. Re:Let me be the first to say: by RudeIota · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Then do it.. and offer it for free.

    --
    Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
  13. Re:Am I missing something?? by this+great+guy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Incidentally, the talk about "pre computed dictionary files" is a ridiculous idea

    This is not what you think it is. What they mean by that term is they support rainbow tables. This is a time-memory trade-off that is very useful to crack non-salted hashes like Windows's standard NTLM hashes.

  14. Re:Am I missing something?? by MR.Mic · · Score: 3, Funny

    I am not exactly sure how this will help do that.

  15. Re:I'd be careful by jesseck · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I've had a directory in my computer I used to organize network security tools, and I had to disable Symantec from scanning it. Every scan, Ophcrack and Cain & Able would pop as a threat. There were a other tools, too. I just expect this behavior out of an AV program. As for the trojan alert, we know that there is malicious software that can capture passwords. So, this was probably a hit from the heuristics of the program- a similar signature. Hell, if I was writing malicious software, and I needed a way to crack weak passwords, would I worry about "licensing" or using open source software?

  16. And by the way by Master+of+Transhuman · · Score: 2, Funny

    whoever gets the first clean cracked version, email me.

    Should take about thirty seconds.

    --
    Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
  17. Re:Let me be the first to say: by Machtyn · · Score: 4, Informative

    But, somebody already has. Here is a list of 100 great Security tools. (It says "Network Security", but the tools are usually able to do more than just network processes.)

  18. Re:I'd be careful by deets101 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    First, I hope you're kidding.
    Second, This raises an interesting question for me. When Symantec owned it did their AV product(s) detect this as malware? That would be a fun call to their tech support.

    --

    --
    My parents went to Slashdot and all I got was this lousy sig.
  19. Re:Am I missing something?? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 3, Funny

    The original author, Mudge, is not only highly technical, he is much, much, much smarter than you. He is also world famous, and it isn't cause he has a way k3w1 hax0r name. He creates tools for security professionals, and he is one of the most elite in the industry. He thinks it is useful to highly technical types and you don't. Maybe you'd like to do some serious introspection before deciding if it is you or Mudge that is missing something here?

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  20. Re:Symantec has a knack of spoiling even the best by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Now they are releasing the ultimate hackers' tool under their umbrella."

    You might want to read TFA, so you have some idea what you are talking about. L0phtcrack is not owned by Symantec, and has been re-acquired by the original developers. It is in the article. Really. Don't let the clueless mods fool you. Your post was not only completely lacking in insight, it is just plain and flat wrong.

    --
    Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
  21. Re:Am I missing something?? by X0563511 · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, and the first Google result would have worked.

    Not sure how you ended up at some random wordpress blog. Learn to search properly.

    --
    For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
  22. Re:still? by Allador · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ignore the idiot AC who responded to you. Password storage has nothing to do with Kerberos. The two things are related, but orthogonal.

    Windows still uses NTLM without a salt in the current versions.

    There is a way to encrypt the SAM with a symmetric cipher, which requires that a floppy or USB key must be physically present for the SAM to be accessed. It's not widely used.