MSFT Bans insecure hashes - was"Passwords with Lan Manager (LM) under Windows"

From: Craig Wright (cwright_at_bdosyd.com.au)
Date: 09/23/05

  • Next message: Feng Chih-hung: "Websphere pentesting questions" 
    Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 13:52:50 +1000
To: <pen-test@securityfocus.com>

    First the quote from the MSFT program manager

    "Microsoft is banning certain cryptographic functions from new computer
    code, citing increasingly sophisticated attacks that make them less
    secure, according to a company executive. The Redmond, Wash., software
    company instituted a new policy for all developers that bans functions
    using the DES, MD4, MD5 and, in some cases, the SHA1 encryption
    algorithm, which is becoming "creaky at the edges," said Michael Howard,
    senior security program manager at the company, Howard said."

    "All three algorithms show signs of 'extreme weakness' and have been
    banned, Howard said. Microsoft is recommending using the Secure Hash
    Algorithm (SHA)256 encryption algorithm and AES (Advanced Encryption
    Standard) cipher instead, he said.

    Quote when hearing about this
    "It's about time," Bruce Schneier of Counterpane Security Inc "Microsoft
    should
    have ended use of DES, MD4 and MD5 years ago"

    To answer "And I'm not sure where you are getting your info regarding
    Microsoft "dropping NTLMv2 for backward compatibility.""...
    Don't take my word for it...

    http://www.eweek.com/article2/0%2C1895%2C1859751%2C00.asp
    http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=30463&category=main
    http://www.technorati.com/search/md5
    http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1859953,00.asp
    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/16/1211227&from=rss
    http://diswww.mit.edu/bloom-picayune/crypto/18482
    http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/GoodbyeMD5.asp
    http://forums.thetechzone.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=76038

    http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/8/3/b838ee36-41a2-4280-af5c-182
    04bb7a581/cryptography_windows_vista_2005_MBR.wmv

    Complimentary
    http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2002/jan02/01-24secure.mspx

    For those who still believe MD5 collisions are just theory
    http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/HackingMd5.asp

    Craig

    PS NTLMv2 uses MD4 and HMAC_MD5 - these are not going to be supported.
    MSFT is moving to AES and SHA256 - so I guess it might be time for some
    people still on Windows 98 or NT 4.0 to finally move on.

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