Steven the hacker realizes the network administrator of Acme Corporation is using syskey in
Windows 2008 Server to protect his resources in the organization. Syskey independently encrypts
the hashes so that physical access to the server, tapes, or ERDs is only first step to cracking the
passwords. Steven must break through the encryption used by syskey before he can attempt to
use brute force dictionary attacks on the hashes. Steven runs a program called “SysCracker”
targeting the Windows 2008 Server machine in attempting to crack the hash used by Syskey. He
needs to configure the encryption level before he can launch the attack. How many bits does
Syskey use for encryption?
A.
40-bit encryption
B.
128-bit encryption
C.
256-bit encryption
D.
64-bit encryption
C is the Ans.
B. 128-bit
Syskey is a utility that encrypts the hashed password information in a SAM database in a Windows system using a 128-bit RC4 encryption key that, by default, is stored in the Windows registry.