8 January 2015
In the past weeks I read a lot about Pass-the-Hash (PtH) attacks, the Zeus botnet and other frightening attack vectors.
For example in PtH attacks, access to specially protected files and registry settings is required. Standard users have very limited or no access to this system objects. If an attacker hijacks your computer he will take all your privileges, in the best case administrative privileges for your computer only, but, in the worst case, administrative privileges for a network.
I think a good New Year’s resolution would be to do everyday work with standard user accounts, and to use accounts with administrative privileges only when required.
If you are managing a company network please avoid login to member servers and workstations with a domain administrator account. Windows stores your password in the computer’s SAM (Security Accounts Manager). Thus it could be attacked by a malicious user …
You will not gain 100% safety, but you will become a lot safer than if you don’t take basic security precautions.
That’s it for today. The only thing left for me to say is …
IT Security Matters 