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Submitted via IRC for soycow1984
Microsoft has patched only recent versions Windows against a dangerous hack that could allow attackers to steal Windows NTLM password hashes without any user interaction.
The hack is easy to carry out and doesn't involve advanced technical skills to pull off. All the attacker needs to do is to place a malicious SCF file inside publicly accessible Windows folders.
Once the file has been placed inside the folder, it executes due to a mysterious bug, collects the target's NTLM password hash, and sends it to an attacker-configured server. Using publicly available software, an attacker could crack the NTLM password hash and later gain access to the user's computer.
Such a hack would allow an attacker that has a direct connection to a victim's network to escalate access to nearby systems.
Source: Bleeping Computer
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 08 2017, @05:03PM (1 child)
What does NTLM stand for? OR what's an NTLM password?
(Score: 2) by nobu_the_bard on Wednesday November 08 2017, @10:18PM
NTLM - New Technology Lan Manager, but nobody calls it this anymore (or possibly never did). It's usually just called Windows Challenge/Response or NT Lan Manager. It's used for Windows authentication on the network.
It's fairly old technology. I don't know when use of it started but the name suggests it's related to Windows NT.
NTLM passwords are quite weak. It's been a weak link in Windows for a long time, but it's been retained for backwards compatibility, and because a lot of stuff that's still in Windows even today probably relies on it, among various other reasons. Probably not a lot of people around anymore that know how deep a rabbit's hole it really is.