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Microsoft Live Account Credentials Leaking from Windows 8 and Above

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Re: Microsoft Live Account Credentials Leaking from Windows 8 and Above

#51

As a Linux user I have kept Windows 7 & 8 partitions in my laptop and workstation disks for years because there used to be time where you needed Windows in the work for some programs to work and some documents to open. Windows 10 upgrade push made me to realize that that time passed a long time ago. Last time I booted to Windows for other reason than playing a game was seven years ago. LibreOffice works well with MS…

This is most likely true, and I believe that this is the reason you see MS trying to migrate to being an online provider and moving the .NET framework (and SQL Server for that matter) to work on other platforms.

Re: Microsoft Live Account Credentials Leaking from Windows 8 and Above

#52
post #2

tl;dr: Simply accessing a website with Edge leaks the user name and password hash to the attacker site. They mention that this is also default behaviour in Spartan, Internet Explorer, Outlook (though I do not know how effectively it can be delivered to something like Outlook). Works on up to date Windows 10 and Edge (there is an online test if you're vulnerable). If you don't use the listed software, you're probably…

I'd be interested to know, how easy is it to actually break the hash of the password-code

https://hashcat.net/hashcat/ should do it, although NTLMv2 isn't explicitly mentioned.

If your password is common (see something like https://github.com/danielmiessler/SecLists/tree/master/Passw...) or <10 ASCII characters, it shouldn't take too long.

Re: Microsoft Live Account Credentials Leaking from Windows 8 and Above

#53

As a Linux user I have kept Windows 7 & 8 partitions in my laptop and workstation disks for years because there used to be time where you needed Windows in the work for some programs to work and some documents to open. Windows 10 upgrade push made me to realize that that time passed a long time ago. Last time I booted to Windows for other reason than playing a game was seven years ago. LibreOffice works well with MS…

> Windows has lost it's grip for good.

For your listed use case of gaming & document creation.

There are a lot of niche applications that are Windows only. All major CAD platforms, a decent chunk of FEA packages, hardware vendor software, etc. At the professional level, Windows still has quite the grip.

Re: Microsoft Live Account Credentials Leaking from Windows 8 and Above

#54
post #2

tl;dr: Simply accessing a website with Edge leaks the user name and password hash to the attacker site. They mention that this is also default behaviour in Spartan, Internet Explorer, Outlook (though I do not know how effectively it can be delivered to something like Outlook). Works on up to date Windows 10 and Edge (there is an online test if you're vulnerable). If you don't use the listed software, you're probably…

I'd be interested to know, how easy is it to actually break the hash of the password-code

Given that far too many passwords can be found with a dictionary attack, it probably only takes seconds for an attacker with "several modern video cards"[1] of hashing power.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U-RbOKanYs

Re: Microsoft Live Account Credentials Leaking from Windows 8 and Above

#55
post #12
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you upgrade to Windows 10 from Windows 7, your existing log-on (which has no Live account connection) continues exactly as before.... It's not really a surprise if an app store needs an account. Are there any that don't?

F-Droid for Android: https://f-droid.org/ Also nearly any Linux package manager ;) (if they count as an "app store" for you)

I think the definition of "store" generally implies the ability to buy things, which neither F-Droid or package managers enable.

Re: Microsoft Live Account Credentials Leaking from Windows 8 and Above

#56
post #48

Is the NTLMv2 hash even salted?

NTLM is designed to do authentication over an unencrypted channel with a shared secret (password). It's also important to appreciate there is no initialization protocol for a new user, it's just "please login user x with y".

As such, the protocol exchanges everything you would need in order to crack the password in the messages themselves. Adding a salt, unless you stipulate a way to share that salt across machines ahead of time, would not prevent cracking a password by intercepting the messages, because the salt would have to be in the message exchange as well. What a public / visible salt in the message exchange does do is eliminate rainbow table (instant) cracking based on intercepting the message.

To answer your question: NTLM is unsalted, and NTLMv2 adds a salt, which is exchanged in the messaging. In this case the salt is applied a bit differently -- MD5(MD5(password), salt) -- because the salt is randomly generated each time, and what's stored in the authentication database is just MD5(password). The salt is only in the challenge-response protocol, so you can still bulk-crack all the passwords in the database if you can steal it.

So, you can think of NTLMv2 as "half-salted" and when you tell people that, you'll have a great story to tell (for values of "great" which include crypto-inclined audiences).

EDIT: I think KMag has it right. The message has the username, domain, salt, and:

  MD5(MD5(MD4(password), username || domain), salt)
The nesting is because of their attempts at shoe-horning this in their legacy codebase and trying to remain backward compatible. A more secure way to hash the same data, but not backward compatible, is;

  HMAC(salt, username || domain || password)

Re: Microsoft Live Account Credentials Leaking from Windows 8 and Above

#57

As a Linux user I have kept Windows 7 & 8 partitions in my laptop and workstation disks for years because there used to be time where you needed Windows in the work for some programs to work and some documents to open. Windows 10 upgrade push made me to realize that that time passed a long time ago. Last time I booted to Windows for other reason than playing a game was seven years ago. LibreOffice works well with MS…

> Windows has lost it's grip for good. For your listed use case of gaming & document creation. There are a lot of niche applications that are Windows only. All major CAD platforms, a decent chunk of FEA packages, hardware vendor software, etc. At the professional level, Windows still has quite the grip.

If you're a windows shop. My shop doesn't use windows at all.

Re: Microsoft Live Account Credentials Leaking from Windows 8 and Above

#58
post #7

The articles recommends that you "strengthen your Microsoft Live account password", but if I understand the vulnerability it is only exposing the hash of your password? If it's only exposing the hash, why should you make your password stronger?

My uneducated understanding is that it is an MD5 hash, quite easily brute forceable if that's the case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NT_LAN_Manager#NTLMv2

The NT Hash is actually an un-salted MD4 (not 5) hash of the UCS-2 encoded password. The authentication protocol uses the V2 Hash, which is an MD5-HMAC of the user name and domain, using the NT Hash as the key. The authentication protocol then uses the V2 Hash as an MD5-HMAC key for a pair of random nonces.

Re: Microsoft Live Account Credentials Leaking from Windows 8 and Above

#60
post #55
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F-Droid for Android: https://f-droid.org/ Also nearly any Linux package manager ;) (if they count as an "app store" for you)

I think the definition of "store" generally implies the ability to buy things, which neither F-Droid or package managers enable.

You're right, I didn't think of that.

Isn't it possible to buy something in the Windows Store and login just for this one purchase? Note sure though, but I think I remember doing that with Windows 8.

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