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Thread: WIndows XP Universal Password

  1. #21
    AO Curmudgeon rcgreen's Avatar
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    I couldn't help thinking of this funny story:

    Historically, back doors have often lurked in systems longer than anyone expected or planned, and a few have become widely known. Ken Thompson's 1983 Turing Award lecture to the ACM admitted the existence of a back door in early Unix versions that may have qualified as the most fiendishly clever security hack of all time. In this scheme, the C compiler contained code that would recognize when the `login' command was being recompiled and insert some code recognizing a password chosen by Thompson, giving him entry to the system whether or not an account had been created for him.

    Normally such a back door could be removed by removing it from the source code for the compiler and recompiling the compiler. But to recompile the compiler, you have to use the compiler -- so Thompson also arranged that the compiler would recognize when it was compiling a version of itself, and insert into the recompiled compiler the code to insert into the recompiled `login' the code to allow Thompson entry -- and, of course, the code to recognize itself and do the whole thing again the next time around! And having done this once, he was then able to recompile the compiler from the original sources; the hack perpetuated itself invisibly, leaving the back door in place and active but with no trace in the sources.

    The Turing lecture that suggested this truly moby hack was later published as "Reflections on Trusting Trust", "Communications of the ACM 27", 8 (August 1984), pp. 761-763 (text available at http://www.acm.org/classics/). Ken Thompson has since confirmed that this hack was implemented and that the Trojan Horse code did appear in the login binary of a Unix Support group machine. Ken says the crocked compiler was never distributed. Your editor has heard two separate reports that suggest that the crocked login did make it out of Bell Labs, notably to BBN, and that it enabled at least one late-night login across the network by someone using the login name `kt'.
    http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html...back-door.html

    I came in to the world with nothing. I still have most of it.

  2. #22
    The Recidivist
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    Just wanted to say that runningduck, you have made my night. On the "ResistanceIsFutile" note, I think I am going to bed. Thanks for the laugh.

    hjack
    "Where the tree of knowledge stands, there is always paradise": thus speak the oldest and the youngest serpents.
    - Friedrich Nietzsche

  3. #23
    Junior Member
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    i think you have to search for windows2000 global password.... if there is one..... you can search for windowsXP .........

  4. #24
    Senior Member
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    The only way to do this as far as i know is use a NTFS driver one is available which has a Distro of Linux on it and it enables the user to edit the registry and also change passwords for user accounts.

    Other then that there is really no other way.

    NTFS is supposed to be a secure enviroment but nothing is too secure.
    [pong][gloworange]665[/gloworange] Next door to the [glowpurple]devil[/glowpurple][/pong]

  5. #25
    A driver with a distro of Linux on it? What? AFAIK drivers cannot contain operating systems. I think you had that backwards.

    What you could do is boot linux from a floppy (like the offline password and registry editor which contains NFTS drivers) which has a script, and enables you to go in and look at all acounts on the machine and change the passwords of any of the accounts.

  6. #26
    Junior Member
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    there is a universal password (for the default administrator acct.), and it is < > until you change it, which you won't do unless you happen to boot into safe mode - which a large % of windows users have never even heard of...

    to finish that last thought - the account is not accessible, nor is it even visible unless one is in safe mode... |:-]
    [shadow]i don\'t know who i am anymore...[/shadow]

  7. #27
    Senior Member
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    Yes it is the offline ntfs pw prog but i do think you will find this is a linux distro and also contains what is commonly known as a NTFS Driver
    [pong][gloworange]665[/gloworange] Next door to the [glowpurple]devil[/glowpurple][/pong]

  8. #28
    Senior Member
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    It wouldn't supreise me too much if the backoor was there...the hard part is finding it and useing it...rember Quake had a backdoor built into it (when we found out about that it explaned why people kept breaking into our firewall box as it had linux quake server runing ) and so did sendmail and ftpd for a while (I wonder if the MS impalmantation of FTP still has it )

  9. #29
    Senior Member
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    I have never heard of such a thing and i really doubt that it exists, like somebody said earlier, we would have had it already if it did exist, so my vote goes for not true.

  10. #30
    THE-OMEN, Right. In your first post you said NTFS drver with a distro of Linux on it. You were right the second time. It is a distro of Linux with a NTFS driver on it. My point was drivers cannot contain OS's, should be the other way around. (and your right, in my haste I typed NFTS, a typo). We're talking about the same thing, but in your fisrt post it wasn't clear.

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