[HN Gopher] L0phtCrack Is Now Open Source
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       L0phtCrack Is Now Open Source
        
       Author : rbanffy
       Score  : 413 points
       Date   : 2021-10-17 23:17 UTC (23 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (l0phtcrack.gitlab.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (l0phtcrack.gitlab.io)
        
       | passwordreset wrote:
       | I remember that the binary for L0phtCrack had some sort of
       | software protection included with it, and it took a 1-bit change
       | to be cracked, itself -- a 0x74 to 0x75, iirc (or 0x74 to 0xEB if
       | you're a stickler for doing it right). I don't remember exactly
       | what the protection was, maybe there was some sort of password
       | count limit or time limit. It was a long time ago. I just
       | remember being a little disappointed that it was that easy.
        
         | atatatat wrote:
         | Know your target market.
        
       | someperson wrote:
       | > L0phtCrack is a password auditing and recovery application
       | originally produced by Mudge from L0pht Heavy Industries. It is
       | used to test password strength and sometimes to recover lost
       | Microsoft Windows passwords, by using dictionary, brute-force,
       | hybrid attacks, and rainbow tables.
       | 
       | - Wikipedia
        
         | Ajedi32 wrote:
         | So it's a hash cracking tool? How does it compare to Hashcat?
         | Any notable distinguishing features?
        
           | ukd1 wrote:
           | It's a part of it, also open-source
           | https://gitlab.com/l0phtcrack/hashcatdll
        
         | bayesian_horse wrote:
         | Thank you...
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | sam345 wrote:
         | Thanks. Wonder why they can't put a description on the GitHub
         | page?
        
           | mlang23 wrote:
           | I envy you for your age... There was a time when _everyone_
           | and _their dog_ knew what L0phtCrack was.
        
           | sigg3 wrote:
           | Obviously they should have.
           | 
           | But it's like the Elvis Presley of password crackers.
        
             | onionisafruit wrote:
             | What's the Big Mama Thornton of password crackers?
        
           | trevcanhuman wrote:
           | Yeah, the repos don't even have a useful README, at least to
           | understand whatever the software does...
        
             | 300bps wrote:
             | It's a widely known password auditing tool that's been
             | around for 24 years.
        
               | someperson wrote:
               | I have been following programming and technology for
               | decades and I had never heard of it.
               | 
               | Every project should have a concise (one or two sentence)
               | description in the GitHub README and the website's
               | homepage. Even the most well-known tools.
        
               | justshowpost wrote:
               | They are not at github even, doh...
        
               | kortilla wrote:
               | Only if you care about onboarding people not familiar
               | with the industry (security in this case). This is not a
               | given for many devs.
        
               | 10x-dev wrote:
               | It's a cracking tool. If you never needed to crack NTLM
               | passwords or bruteforce windows shared folder passwords
               | over dialup, you might not have heard about it in the
               | casual technology news.
        
               | washadjeffmad wrote:
               | Do you ever make it to DC or Blackhat? Not having to
               | introduce/advertise who you are or what your tools do is
               | part of the scene.
        
               | jeppesen-io wrote:
               | Ideally so, but if you've never of heard of this tool,
               | you need to expand your news sources for many reasons.
               | This is just a symptom
        
               | selcuka wrote:
               | This is assuming that everybody has an interest in
               | cybersecurity. I can come up with equally well known (in
               | specific circles) tools that you may not have heard of.
        
               | mydeskistoosm wrote:
               | Can you suggest some news sources?
        
               | da_chicken wrote:
               | I agree they should have a description in the readme, as
               | a courtesy if nothing else.
               | 
               | But L0phtCrack is a very well known tool. If you've never
               | heard of it and have been following security stuff for
               | decades, that's really on you.
        
               | philh wrote:
               | What do you mean by "that's really on you"? I'd normally
               | interpret it as something like... "this is a state of
               | affairs that would be different if you'd acted
               | differently, and you knew or could have been able to know
               | this in advance". Along those lines, anyway. But not
               | having heard about a tool doesn't really seem to fit
               | that.
        
               | ziddoap wrote:
               | > _What do you mean by "that's really on you"?_
               | 
               | At some point, a tool is so ubiquitous that it's just
               | _odd_ to not have encountered it. You don 't see many
               | accountants that haven't heard of Excel, webdevs that
               | haven't heard of Apache, construction workers that
               | haven't heard of a hammer, or cybersec workers who
               | haven't heard of L0phtCrack.
        
               | da_chicken wrote:
               | It means it's their fault because they clearly were not
               | paying attention or their memory has failed them.
               | 
               | L0phtCrack has been decreasingly relevant in the past 10
               | years or so -- it wasn't available for awhile and some
               | free tools are similar so you were basically buying the
               | rainbow tables -- but if you were in security in the
               | Windows 2000 or Windows XP era, you know of this tool.
               | There was a lot of discussion for years around and about
               | password crackers after rainbow tables became a thing.
               | 
               | It's not like not knowing what Wireshark or nmap is, but
               | it is like saying that you've never even heard of Kismet
               | or John the Ripper. Or like being a DBA for decades that
               | never heard of Informix. Or a programmer for "decades"
               | that has never even _heard_ of Delphi. Like what were you
               | doing in the early 2000s to have completely missed the
               | death of Borland and Pascal and the popular variants?
               | These are big enough events in the industry that if you
               | 're in it you're going to be aware of it.
        
             | Kikawala wrote:
             | README.md should be renamed to BUILD.md; check under doc/
             | for a useful description.
        
       | beermonster wrote:
       | A trip down memory lane!
        
         | Haemm0r wrote:
         | About the same time as the oxid.it (page is not the original
         | anymore) tools..
        
       | AdrianB1 wrote:
       | I used it in ~ 1999-2000 to check password strength in the
       | company I worked for; it was running for 1 minute, for any
       | password that was recovered the owner got a notice to change it
       | immediately. Initially 50% of the passwords were the username and
       | more than 50% were up tp 5 characters long. At that time an 8
       | char min length was "safe enough" for a company that had no
       | sensitive data other than the payroll.
        
       | vptr wrote:
       | Dang this does bring back the memories. What was the other tool I
       | used a lot for reversing. Something ice something... softice
       | debugger. That was also a piece of art.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | lostlogin wrote:
         | Thought you were summoning the mod for a minute there.
        
           | mindcrime wrote:
           | Ia R'lyea! dang ftagn! Ia! Ia!
        
       | sharmin123 wrote:
       | Are There Top Signs of a Cheating Lover? What To do Then?:
       | https://www.hackerslist.co/are-there-top-signs-of-a-cheating...
        
       | Zenst wrote:
       | I recall running this on a dual core Celron (BP6 dual socket
       | motherboard) over-clocked back in the day to get 1Ghz `testing`
       | power. Fun times.
        
         | dagw wrote:
         | Ah I remember that setup. The fact that 'normal' people could
         | actually afford a 1Ghz computer was mind blowing.
        
           | rbanffy wrote:
           | I remember that motherboard :-). Cheapest dual socket setup
           | you could get.
        
       | throwaway984393 wrote:
       | _   _                                                     ((___))
       | [ x x ]           __________________________              \   /
       | _ _/      Thanx DilDog!!      \              (' ')
       | \__________________________/               (U)
        
         | loxias wrote:
         | If yoU were a teenager at the right time, the L0pht, et al.
         | were _crUcial_ in nUdging the next decades of yoUr life.
         | 
         | I'm sUre I'm not alone in having fond memories seeing this. :)
         | 
         | PS: (2 decades since Boston madness!)
        
           | mydeskistoosm wrote:
           | you're doing something neat with your Us but I,
           | unfortunately, came of age after lots of the cool times were
           | over. All the hackers got jobs in industry and it feels like
           | if I poke anything that isn't hackthebox I'll either A. have
           | the FBI up my ass immediately or worse, B. have created a
           | record somewhere of having committed one felony or another
           | that will appear at an appropriate time for someone else and
           | inappropriate time for me.
        
             | baremetal wrote:
             | set up your own testing environments.
        
               | arendtio wrote:
               | As long as your country allows you to even own the
               | tools...
        
               | dpwm wrote:
               | Which countries don't?
        
               | arendtio wrote:
               | I have no idea about the global situation, but in Germany
               | there was a lot of discussion when they introduced SS202c
               | StGb 15 years ago.
               | 
               | - https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/08/new_germ
               | an_ha...
               | 
               | - https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__202c.html
               | 
               | However, it seems it is not about owning the tools, but
               | rather about creating them.
        
             | DeathArrow wrote:
             | You've surely heard about Tor, socks proxies, VPNs, SSH
             | tunnels.
        
               | Communitivity wrote:
               | If I am online, I assume some entity somewhere can
               | maliciously access what I am doing. My goal is to secure
               | it enough so that entity has to be a state actor. Tor is
               | not a silver bullet, even if used properly, because
               | anyone (including state actors) can stand up a Tor node:
               | https://nusenu.medium.com/tracking-one-year-of-malicious-
               | tor...
        
               | PeterisP wrote:
               | This comes up at "have created a record somewhere of
               | having committed one felony or another that will appear
               | at an appropriate time for someone else and inappropriate
               | time for me."
               | 
               | I.e. you make one opsec mistake now, nobody's perfect -
               | and then many years later when someone will finally care,
               | this will be used to identify you, there's loads of
               | examples like that of investigations/convictions where
               | the people did know how to use "Tor, socks proxies, VPNs,
               | SSH tunnels" and used them properly _almost_ always.
        
               | JTbane wrote:
               | Tor is very slow, and VPNs will rat you out immediately.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | But which ones are really setup by the NSA to get said
               | evidence that will be inconvenient for him at some point
               | in the future? (I suspect Tor, and at least a few of the
               | commercial VPN providers)
        
               | DeathArrow wrote:
               | It might be true. But what if you chain multiple
               | defenses, each one in states that do not get well with
               | each other? Every investigation will need collaboration.
        
               | lazide wrote:
               | True, but your last hop to you is usually the most
               | important one. It's all about a risk analysis on how
               | likely and cheap it would be to use it vs the cost to you
               | if someone does. And keeping in mind that a lot of these
               | agencies have to burn their budget or risk losing it.
        
               | hungrigekatze wrote:
               | Some recent news out of the commercial VPN universe...
               | From a cryptographer professor at Johns Hopkins: https://
               | twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/14493567426896896...
               | Kape, an Israeli 'adware' company that renamed itself to
               | distance itself from its prior history as an adware
               | company, recently bought up ExpressVPN and several other
               | services and rebranded itself as a VPN services company.
               | Kape also bought VPN ranking websites and juiced the
               | rankings (into positions #1 and #2) for the VPN companies
               | that it just bought: https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-
               | technologies-owns-expressvpn... I suspect that Kape is
               | probably a CryptoAG repeat -
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG - and is doing
               | double duty for the US IC along with the Israelis, but it
               | could be just a pure Israeli shop too.
        
               | sizzle wrote:
               | Oof, what VPN is the best for privacy nowadays?
        
               | wiz21c wrote:
               | The CryptoAG story is super interesting for seeing how
               | super powers handle the issue, thx for the wikipedia.
        
           | TedDoesntTalk wrote:
           | It all changed after the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)
           | passed in 1986. Before that, there were no federal crimes
           | against hacking. I don't remember any state statutes, either,
           | but there may have been some scattered around here and there.
           | My state certainly did not have any or I'd have been in
           | "juvi".
        
         | arminiusreturns wrote:
         | Thanks cDc for being an inspiration all my years of computing.
        
         | hexman wrote:
         | ...         DilDog is this you?
        
       | poopsmithe wrote:
       | Ah yes, the trusty info site and code repository with no
       | explanation of _what_ the software does.
        
         | claytongulick wrote:
         | For many HN readers l0phtCrack is iconic, and so needs no
         | introduction.
         | 
         | FYI though, it was a password brute force tool that many of us
         | used for various (mostly innocent) myschevios purposes 15-20
         | years ago.
        
         | beermonster wrote:
         | L0phtCrack is a password auditing and recovery application
         | originally produced by Mudge.
        
       | 0x0nyandesu wrote:
       | I got expelled from high school because of this program.
       | 
       | I'm a millionaire now though so _shrug_
        
         | skhm wrote:
         | I was a hair's breadth away from expulsion too - exfiltrated
         | .sam files from a PC in the library on a 3.5" floppy. Seems to
         | be quite common experience judging by this thread.
         | 
         | Why did we all get caught? Smart enough to figure that out in
         | your teens, dumb enough to think you can get away with it...
         | 
         | In my case I was operating with a dumbass friend who left a
         | "calling card" on one of the compromised machines.
        
           | 0x0nyandesu wrote:
           | To be honest I fessed up for no reason. All they knew was I
           | logged in to some box. I could have made some stuff up about
           | doing some legitimate work and I'd probably have gotten away
           | with it. At the time I was extremely naive and dumb. My
           | advice to kids is not to stop doing things but to simply
           | downplay what you were doing. "No I wasn't hacking. I was
           | securing the system." Etc. Come up with plausible reasons and
           | the benefit of doubt will generally keep things from
           | escalating beyond the IT staff. Once admins start talking
           | about hacking you've lost the war of words.
           | 
           | It's as much social engineering as anything else.
        
         | nirv wrote:
         | I didn't get caught.
         | 
         | But as a result of my demonstrative flexing cyber-security
         | activity -- I was granted with 'root' credentials on the
         | school's SUSE Linux server... Which apparently at the same time
         | was used as an ISP router for an entire city block.
         | 
         | This granted responsibility, unsurprisingly, turned out to be
         | an extremely effective step to cool my eagerness to hack into
         | all things.
        
         | hbn wrote:
         | Congrats, how did you do it?
        
           | 0x0nyandesu wrote:
           | Combination of 401k growth, having a six figure income,
           | cryptocurrency investments, and early investment in AMD and
           | TSLA and a few side income streams.
        
             | mike_d wrote:
             | Sounds like you owe your success more to WallStreetBets
             | than hacking.
        
               | 0x0nyandesu wrote:
               | Eh I mined a lot of it and it's thanks to my computer
               | skills that I was able to do so. Most of it was from
               | that.
               | 
               | Also my stock positions predate wsb by like 7 years.
        
             | kmos wrote:
             | Thanks for sharing.
        
         | girvo wrote:
         | They tried to expel me for this (among other) reason(s) too,
         | though the Vice Principal went to bat for me and instead I was
         | banned from using any computers on school property for the last
         | couple years of high school instead.
        
           | skhm wrote:
           | Very similar experience - in the end no police, and I just
           | had to stay back and write a long essay on why hacking is
           | wrong (pretty sure I was an edgelord about it and wrote
           | something nuanced about white-hatting...)
        
       | Svperstar wrote:
       | Back in like 1998 or 1999 I used L0phtCrack to get the admin
       | password to the PCs in the computer lab. Good times :)
        
         | weq wrote:
         | Combine this with a IIS3 exploit and a ip scanner you coded for
         | fun and you make that labs all around the world :)
        
           | short12 wrote:
           | Or the big red button admin bypass. If I remember right ms
           | patched that vuln but then it would just act like it was
           | winnuked instead. Bravo Microsoft. They really are fun to
           | make fun of looking back at their record for security
           | 
           | Good times were had by non-sysadmins around the world
        
       | oscribinn wrote:
       | Calling yourself "dildog" is pretty fucking cool.
        
         | boppo1 wrote:
         | I don't get it. Dill pickle dog?
        
           | quickthrowman wrote:
           | Dildo G
        
       | naltun wrote:
       | The story of L0phtCrack, as well as other people / projects
       | associated with cDc (Cult of the Dead Cow), is nicely recounted
       | in the book Cult of the Dead Cow, by Joseph Menn.
        
       | Havoc wrote:
       | I loved their choice of names.
        
       | Communitivity wrote:
       | I haven't thought about Mudge in a long time. If you've ever
       | worked cybersecurity for the government, or in general, you owe
       | him, Brian Oblivion, Space Rogue and the other members of L0pht
       | for opening the door. They were pioneers of responsible
       | disclosure, and brought the problem to light when they testified
       | to Congress in 98 that in 30 minutes they could shut down the
       | Internet. He and the others had uncovered DoS, specifically a BGP
       | DoS that would automatically cascade across the Internet.
       | 
       | Mudge was a musical prodigy and an alum of BBN, one of the key
       | players in creating ARPAnet. His bio is fascinating, and you can
       | find a good treatment of it here:
       | https://www.cybersecurityeducationguides.org/peiter-zatko/
        
         | brainwipe wrote:
         | I don't work in infosec or gov but after reading that bio, I
         | think we all owe him. Thanks for the tip.
        
       | short12 wrote:
       | I wonder what the reasoning for open sourcing it now. And why not
       | from the get go instead of decades later. Licence choices are
       | obviously up to the authors. But at this point it is more a
       | museum relic than anything practical
        
         | mike_d wrote:
         | The rights to L0phtCrack were purchased about a year ago by a
         | company that made password cracking rigs for large companies to
         | audit their employees passwords. They filed bankruptcy due to
         | the GPU shortage changing their COGS overnight. When payments
         | stopped being made the license reverted back to the author and
         | he open sourced it.
        
         | kortilla wrote:
         | This is the reason:
         | 
         | > at this point it is more a museum relic than anything
         | practical
        
           | mydeskistoosm wrote:
           | Were the records of payment a method to keep track of who
           | might be using it?
        
             | short12 wrote:
             | Lol people paid for it? That was in the era of WinRAR and
             | WinZip. There must be dozens of people that paid for those
             | pieces of software
        
       | px43 wrote:
       | Shame what happened to Terrahash (previous owner of L0phtCrack).
       | As someone who has purchased several Brutalis cracking rigs,
       | those things were the most badass machines on the market.
       | 
       | Looks like they sold and committed to a bunch of cracking rigs
       | before sourcing enough GPUs right before prices skyrocketed, and
       | were suddenly on the hook for a lot more than they could
       | realistically pay for. Hopefully Jeremi manages to pull through.
       | It's a fantastic company that makes a fantastic product. I'd love
       | to buy some new rigs when they get their supply chain issues
       | figured out.
       | 
       | https://terahash.com/letter-from-ceo
        
         | Invictus0 wrote:
         | Wow, that is an extraordinary letter. A real case study in
         | communication with customers.
        
         | _wldu wrote:
         | That's disappointing. They have some great systems. I hope they
         | come through it OK.
        
       | teleforce wrote:
       | L0phtCrack was featured in the Phrack Magazine (53) inside an
       | article written by Aleph1 on attacking PPTP, one of the oldest
       | VPN protocols [1]. Prior to that, Aleph1 has written arguably the
       | most famous article in Phrack Magazine (49) to date [2].
       | 
       | [1] The Crumbling Tunnel:
       | 
       | http://phrack.org/issues/53/12.html
       | 
       | [2] Smashing The Stack For Fun And Profit:
       | 
       | http://phrack.org/issues/49/14.html
        
         | dagw wrote:
         | _Aleph1 has written arguably the most famous article in Phrack
         | Magazine_
         | 
         | Given the number of people, including myself, who consider
         | reading that article a truly formative experiences, you might
         | argue it's one of the most famous/influential articles in
         | programming.
        
       | wiseleo wrote:
       | I remember the l0pht bbs :)
        
       | lvs wrote:
       | At last, some actual hacker news!
        
       | hestefisk wrote:
       | Ahhh yes, this is a classic tool. Together with John the Ripper
       | this forms the basis of lost sleep in my teenage years.
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | I went from John the Ripper to L0phtCrack to Hash Cat. Now I want
       | a Quantum computer because for some type of passwords even
       | running Hash Cat on a big GPU farm is too slow because of hashing
       | algorithms.
        
         | isitdopamine wrote:
         | Bad news is: a quantum computer will not crack hashes faster.
        
           | john_alan wrote:
           | It would reduce the output space of a cryptographic hash by
           | its square root. That would help speed up attacks would it
           | not?
        
             | DaiPlusPlus wrote:
             | Needs waaaaaaay more qubits than exist in the world right
             | now.
        
       | mydeskistoosm wrote:
       | Is it even really relevant anymore?
        
         | rhexs wrote:
         | No. They seem to have been doing a few puff PR pieces recently.
         | Can't imagine anyone under 30 knows or cares about them.
         | 
         | I guess their main claim to fame was being the first "hacker"
         | group to do PR moderately well and transition into decent
         | careers. Not really even an interesting footnote in history.
        
           | bleachedsleet wrote:
           | I'm under 30 and certainly wouldn't relegate L0pht to a mere
           | footnote in history.
        
             | devin wrote:
             | Nice to hear this. I'm late 30s, and l0pht was a huge
             | inspiration to me.
        
           | joemazerino wrote:
           | L0pht put hacking and infosec on the map for arguably
           | hundreds of people. They were and still are incredibly
           | talented.
        
             | travoc wrote:
             | I would say they were the first group that got many Windows
             | sysadmins to start thinking about OS security.
        
             | sokoloff wrote:
             | Indeed. I had the good fortune to work with DilDog before
             | he co-founded Veracode. I count him in the top ten of
             | talented co-workers across a three decade career.
        
               | bloblaw wrote:
               | I work with him now at his current gig. Totally agree.
               | Constantly learning new things from him.
        
           | hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
           | I was going to object to your "under 30" quip, then realized
           | I haven't been under 30 for quite a while. Oops.
        
             | freedomben wrote:
             | I'm in the same boat, and it's really amazing how quickly
             | things change. I was explaining to a coworker the other day
             | how much more optimistic we were in the 90s, and when he
             | casually mentioned that he was born in 2000, I suddenly
             | felt really old.
        
               | rbanffy wrote:
               | > I'm in the same boat, and it's really amazing how
               | quickly things change.
               | 
               | The number of candles on my birthday cake seems to change
               | the fastest. I ask for hexadecimal whenever possible.
        
             | mherdeg wrote:
             | It's been disappointing to see that Beto O'Rourke doesn't
             | get asked more questions about his present-day commitment
             | to the Cult of the Dead Cow's agenda.
        
           | jcims wrote:
           | > Not really even an interesting footnote in history.
           | 
           | This just feels like you have an axe to grind.
        
             | rnd0 wrote:
             | Having a bias is not the same thing as being wrong
        
           | SGML_ROCKSTAR wrote:
           | They testified in front of the U.S. Senate in 1998. That's
           | more than a footnote might do, in my opinion.
           | 
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVJldn_MmMY
        
           | thricegr8 wrote:
           | Human, I'm 28, been in InfoSec for ~10 years. Granted, I was
           | lucky enough to be interested in and peruse this as a
           | professional branch when I graduated college in 2016. I am
           | also an adjunct professor at my local university, where I
           | make it a salient point to remind my students of the history
           | of hacking. We talk about this still.
           | 
           | I also start every semester off with the opening scene of
           | Hackers - the best hacking movie ever made :)
        
             | loxias wrote:
             | > I'm 28 ... adjunct professor ... We talk about this
             | still.
             | 
             | I'm a decade older, and am relieved to see this.
             | 
             | > Hackers - the best hacking movie ever made :)
             | 
             | Counterpoint: _Sneakers_: _the thinking person 's hacking
             | movie._
        
               | claytongulick wrote:
               | I still vote for Wargames :-)
        
               | amiga wrote:
               | Ferris Bueller's Day Off has some inspiring hacks :^)
        
               | loxias wrote:
               | Hah. That it does! I like the parallel with "Die Hard is
               | the best Christmas movie".
        
               | mavhc wrote:
               | Everyone knows Brazil is the best christmas movie
        
               | randombits0 wrote:
               | That's got data encrypting algorithms, you'll never get
               | through that!
        
               | rbanffy wrote:
               | > Counterpoint: _Sneakers_: the thinking person's hacking
               | movie.
               | 
               | Lacks the soundtrack. I always work to music to help
               | focus.
        
               | cholmon wrote:
               | Lacks? No way. Sneakers' score features Branford
               | Marsalis, which is very different feel to Hackers (which
               | is also great), but imo very evocative of the the
               | playfulness, mystery, & intrigue of the crypto storyline.
        
               | rbanffy wrote:
               | Both have good soundtracks, but Hackers is still better.
               | ;-)
        
             | spitfire wrote:
             | > I also start every semester off with the opening scene of
             | Hackers - the best hacking movie ever made :)
             | 
             |  _Great_ soundtrack. Respect.
        
           | k1rcher wrote:
           | Under 30 here and have only ever seen Hashcat as the
           | predominantly used software for cracking hashes
        
           | dapids wrote:
           | If you care about the history of the scene you'll know the
           | name regardless of your age.
        
             | mydeskistoosm wrote:
             | Would you do a guy a favor and lay some links or at least
             | breadcrumbs such that I might start learning my history?
             | I'm picking up programming at a relatively advanced age
             | (31) and don't have the time to do deep hunts for stuff
             | like I did when I was in my 20s BUT I want to keep security
             | right in mind as I write everything I make.
        
               | thrashtitan wrote:
               | ahh..this is i feel going to be a controversial take, but
               | it isnt said with malice.
               | 
               | the history of mudge and l0pht are more interesting than
               | they are useful. if you want to get 202X security chops
               | though, digging up the past isnt really the way. its more
               | of a thing to do a deep dive into because youre
               | interested, not because you expect anything out of it.
               | 
               | there are other researchers like gruqg who chronicle the
               | exploits of old teams like l0pht and ACIDBITCHEZ under
               | the guise of teaching the new wave about LOL hacking
               | (living off the land), but i personally think they are
               | doing it more for the reasons one writes a history book;
               | cause its interesting.
               | 
               | if you want to learn LOL, read mandiant APT markers.
               | thats how modern hacking is done, its really not at all
               | like it used to be. i myself am happy to offer the
               | following ocunterpoint though; the number one ranked
               | hackerone bugbounty is dawgyg, an ex blackhat whose come
               | in and dominated the bb scene in a huge way. i counter my
               | counter point with the thousands of guys who make a solid
               | living doing bug bounty who do not posess the old skills.
               | they arent a requirement to make it in modern sec,
               | because things are just different.
               | 
               | they were a bunch of badass cowboys who became the first
               | to "make it". big boy jobs, wide spread respect in the
               | community, inspiring a generation like egypt etc who went
               | on to do metasploit work.
               | 
               | i am keen as a BEAN for grugqs book to come out, because
               | to me, its fascinating, interesting and inspiring. mudge
               | has been my personal hero since i found out about him
               | when i was in highschool, but that was long after their
               | reign was done and they were corporate.
               | 
               | i think the following anology works well too; lopht are
               | comparable to van halen; when they both burst onto their
               | scenes, almost noone else was doing what they did, and
               | noone else before had gotten as big.
               | 
               | but time marches on, and other people do something new,
               | and suddenly evh isnt as flashy as the new crop.
        
         | GekkePrutser wrote:
         | Yeah I thought hashcat pretty much superseded it, especially
         | with its amazing GPU acceleration.
         | 
         | Nevertheless, nice of them to open source it.
        
       | zuminator wrote:
       | I remember the app but never knew how to pronounce it -- it
       | sounded like (record-scratch)-Crack, or maybe Bill the Cat, in my
       | head. Light? Loft? Lowpft?
        
         | derwiki wrote:
         | "Loft" per the CDC book I recently read.
        
           | zuminator wrote:
           | Thank you!
        
       | brandonarnold wrote:
       | Nostalgia factor is kicking into high gear on this one, as I
       | haven't thought of L0phtCrack since the early 2000s.
        
         | senectus1 wrote:
         | lol now i feel old. none of my co-workers know the name :-(
        
           | Svperstar wrote:
           | I used lophtcrack to get the windows admin password to the
           | computer lab PCs in high school :)
        
             | simonmales wrote:
             | Yep, and the password was 'driver'.
        
               | richarme wrote:
               | In my school's case it was 'passwd'. No cracking needed
               | to obtain that one though, the admin had it written on a
               | post-it on his monitor.
        
               | stordoff wrote:
               | My school's domain admin password was 'school' (later
               | changed to the school's name with O->0 substitution).
               | It's marginally better than their VNC password though,
               | which was 'vnc' (VNC Server was installed on every
               | machine in the school).
        
               | Svperstar wrote:
               | Actually it was bhs-2020 still remember it after all
               | these years
        
               | jhpankow wrote:
               | At my school the password was the person's username.
               | Someone guessed it one day. Which in hindsight was
               | inevitable when the login screen was exposed to hundreds
               | of bored kids every day.
        
         | shellum wrote:
         | Right? I think it was introduced at DefCon ~5. As I remember
         | the introduction speech, Mudge got sick over a weekend and
         | implemented it. Good times!
        
         | RNCTX wrote:
         | Pretty sure I used it in the early 2000s to get at Win2k
         | passwords that were lost/forgotten. Took about an hour on a
         | K6-III 450 ;).
        
         | angled wrote:
         | It's making me nostalgic for all of the old tools - what was
         | another one, ``john''? Although that seems to have been
         | modernised. https://www.openwall.com/john/
        
           | cbanek wrote:
           | And of course, the CDC's hilarity toolbox: Back Orifice.
           | Being able to eject all the CD-ROM drives in a computer lab
           | together was really worth it.
        
             | irthomasthomas wrote:
             | God I miss those days. And now I feel old, like the father
             | I thought I'd never be. Nostalgic for an age that I thought
             | was forever. But really, never was.
        
           | [deleted]
        
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