{dc612} Lophtcrack is back

[Chameleous]

http://www.l0phtcrack.com/

[Jeremy Johnson]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/27/l0phtcrack_returns/

Seminal password tool rises from Symantec ashes

L0phtcrack returns

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco

Posted in Enterprise Security, 27th May 2009 18:34 GMT

The Register Agile Data Centre Summit

More than three years after Symantec unceremoniously pulled the plug on
L0phtcrack, the seminal tool for auditing and cracking passwords is back
with a set of new capabilities.

Starting Wednesday, L0phtcrack 6 is available from the same team of hackers
who introduced it to the world a decade ago. The program was pulled from the
market in late 2005 shortly after it was acquired by Symantec, presumably
because its offensive capabilities didn't fit in with the company's
portfolio of defensive products and services.

While programs like John the Ripper and Cain and Abel in many ways filled
the void, L0phtcrack is credited with bringing awareness about password
strength to the masses.

"It was one of the few tools that you could use to do password cracking that
looked legitimate at the time," said HD Moore, founder of the Metasploit
project. "It became fairly common for not only the pen testers and the
assessment folks to use but also very common for system administrators to
use to audit the passwords of their systems."

A lot has changed in the half decade that has passed since L0phtcrack 5 was
released, and many of those changes are reflected in the latest version. It
adds support for x64 processors and the latest operating system releases
from Microsoft, Ubuntu and others. It also brings sharp new teeth to
cracking passwords that use the NTLM hash, an algorithm for protecting
Windows pass phrases that has come into vogue in the past few years.

According to Moore, we largely have L0phtcrack to thank for the phasing out
of a previous Microsoft password hash known as LAN Manager. The algorithm
stored hashes in seven-character, case-insensitive chunks that made cracking
especially easy.

"It really changed people's views on how they should develop secure
passwords," Moore explained. "L0phtcrack is probably the number-one reason
why people disabled LANMan hashes and actually picked passwords longer than
14 characters in corporations."

L0phtcrack's reincarnation comes after its creators from the L0pht hacker
collective repurchased the program's rights from Symantec. The anti-virus
provider had acquired them when it acquired @stake in 2004. @stake took
control of the rights a year or so earlier when it merged with L0pht.

With a price starting at $295, it's by no means the cheapest password tool
on the market, but L0phtcrack team member Christien Rioux says the features
such as scheduling and a dashboard that simplifies the process of disabling
users with weak passwords makes the program stand out.

"There are a number of enterprise administrative features that make the
product worth it for organizations that are doing this on a regular basis,"
he said. "It's been a very long time that this has been out there. The
benefit is that we've had the opportunity to interact and fix [customer]
issues and take [in] their concerns." R

-----Original Message-----
From: dc...@googlegroups.com [mailto:dc...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of
Chameleous
Sent: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 3:47 PM
To: DC612
Subject: {dc612} Lophtcrack is back


http://www.l0phtcrack.com/