Hackers Beware

Protecting Against NT Password Crackers

There is no practical way to completely prevent password cracking. As long as you have a network, and you are connected to the Internet, attackers or insiders will be able to find some way to extract or capture password hashes and crack them. The goal of this section is to make it a lot harder for attackers to perform password cracking and to make it take a lot longer for them to run their programs. For example, if someone can extract your password hashes, but it would take them 100 years to brute force the passwords, and all users have to change their password every 90 days, then you are in very good shape. By the time the attacker cracks the passwords, the usefulness of the information has expired because ...