Early 1990s: LM and NTLM hashes LAN Manager uses a particularly weak password hashing method ("LM hash") in its authentication protocol Passwords are case-insensitive An up to 14-character password is split after the 7th character and the two halves are used as DES encryption keys The two password "halves" may be cracked separately, just like with crypt16 and bigcrypt, but much faster (no salt, shorter, case-insensitive, no iterations) Windows NT stores LM hashes, along with MD4-based NTLM hashes Cracking the weaker LM hashes is usually enough NTLM hashes are also a step back as compared to Unix crypt(3): no salt, no iterations Knowledge of the NTLM hash is enough for network authentication Plaintext passwords and hashes of logged-on users are stored in memory