![]() The chunks can also be attacked separately as you will see when we start cracking passwords. Passwords longer than 7 characters are split into 2 chunks so a 14 character password is effectively turned into two, seven character passwords (and converted to uppercase). So my way secure password of PaSsWoRd would be converted automatically to PASSWORD. So if you had passwords of only characters (A-Z, a-z) you would think you would have 52 possibilities, but in reality with LM, you only have 26 because password are converted to all uppercase. By converting all characters to uppercase you effectively cut your key space in half. These three issues give rainbow tables their cracking power. So why is the LM algorithm weak? “The LANManger scheme has several weaknesses, including converting all characters to uppercase, splitting passwords into 7-byte chunks, and not using an additional random element known as ‘salt.” Microsoft’s LAN Manager algorithm and its weaknesses This allows for the benefit of backwards compatibility with older operating systems on your network but unfortunately makes the job of password cracking easier if you can obtain the LM hashes instead of the NTLM hashes. By default Windows XP or even Windows Server 2003 keeps the LM hash of your passwords in addition to a more secure hash (NTLM or NTLMv2). LM stands for LAN Manager, this password algorithm was used in earlier days of Windows and still lives on only for compatibility reasons. Rainbow Tables are popular with a particularly weak password algorithm known as Microsoft LM hash. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |