L0phtCrack – What It Is and Why You Need It
A dark web audit recently revealed that the number of stolen usernames and passwords has increased by 300% since 2018. This translates into more than 15 billion stolen credentials that are now available to cybercriminals. Network administrators need to keep corporate resources and client information secure in today’s world. One way to accomplish this goal is to encourage long, random, and frequently changed passwords. This cannot be easy to facilitate, manage, or audit without proper resources. One tool to help with that is L0phtcrack.
What is L0phtCrack?
L0phtCrack is an application designed to audit and recover passwords in use on networks to ensure that they are difficult to decipher, regularly changed, and never recycled. It was actually created by hackers in 1997 and is widely known as the world’s first commercially available password auditing solution. Since that time, several versions of L0phtCrack, the most recent rolling out in 2016. In 2020, L0phtCrack was acquired by Terahash for an undisclosed amount of money.
L0phtcrack works by first obtaining password hashes. L0phtCrack has the ability to obtain password hashes directly from other machines on the network remotely, making it easy for network administrators. Audits performed by L0phtCrack can be done manually or can be scheduled to run at predetermined times. Once L0phtcrack is in possession of groups of password hashes, it subjects them to several attacks. After checking that the password is not the same as the username, the program performs a dictionary attack, a hybrid attack, a pre-computed attack using rainbow tables, and a brute-force attack.
Why do you Need and how to use L0phtCrack?
Odds are, your employees and/or your clients utilize passwords to protect crucial information. “Experts have called for the death of passwords for decades, but they are still in use for practically every operating system and application: web, mobile, and desktop. Guessable, stuffable, and brute-forceable passwords are a top security risk today. It would help if you had password auditing, or you have a gaping security hole,” said Christien Rioux, L0phtCrack’s former Head of Engineering.
If your employees and/or customers use passwords, you need L0phtCrack to perform routine audits. In addition to auditing passwords, L0phtCrack can also help by remediating problems with passwords. After an audit, L0phtcrack provides a report with information about the security rating and age of various passwords utilized on the network. In turn, the network administrator can disable these accounts or require a password change at the next login.
Cybercriminals continue to hone their techniques, creating new and unique ways to gain access to sensitive client data. As an experienced managed IT and cybersecurity firm based in Naperville, Illinois, the team at OutSource IT Solutions Group understands that a proactive approach is necessary to implement mitigation tactics to protect your network.
Our team will assist you by taking proactive steps to protect passwords used on your network by implementing programs like L0phtCrack designed to thwart cyber theft. Contact the OutSource IT Solutions Group team at 630-701-3393 or visit us at https://www.osgusa.com/ to learn more about how we can help implement proactive cybersecurity strategies to protect your business.
