NT Password-Cracking Programs

Several programs can be used to crack passwords in an NT environment. In this section, we look at the following programs:

  • L0phtcrack

  • NTSweep

  • NTCrack

  • PWDump2

L0phtcrack is by far the most powerful and feature-rich of the programs listed. Also, PWDump2 is not a password cracking program, but rather a utility used to extract password hashes. It is included in this section to make it complete.

L0phtcrack

L0phtcrack (with “0” being the number zero) is an NT password-auditing tool that computes NT passwords based on the cryptographic hashes stored on the operating system. For security reasons, and as covered in Chapter 8, “Password Security,” the operating system does not store passwords in clear-text. The passwords are ...

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