RE: Brute force VNC crack

From: Ingecom - SERRE Jean-Christophe ()
Date: Wed Aug 16 2000 - 15:16:51 EDT

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    "Kenneth Foster" <> wrote:
    >
    > brute forcing of passwords will always work. There are two ways to do stop
    > this.
    >
    > 1: Use passwords that don't show up in dictionaries. This may be more
    > difficult to remember, but it makes it less likely to be cracked. The code,
    > as written, uses a dictionary attack. Not quite what it says in the title
    > of the crack.

    Yes and no: in "hacker toolz" you'll find a lot of little programs for
    generating you a (huge) textfile with the complete list of possible
    passwords based on your provided character set and mini/maxi lengths --
    then, using that textfile as the "dictionnary" will actually perform the
    brute-force attack.

    This kind of attack tool often just provide support for an external
    textfile, because it allows to reuse the wealth of available
    dictionnaries as well as a brute-force generated textfile, while being a
    simple quick-n-dirty program...

    > 2: The other way to stop this is to change the encryption key used by your
    > company and recompile your server and client tools. By changing the key no
    > password, even the correct one, from a non-company VNCviewer will work. At
    > least from my testing.

    As a note, since most people don't have VC++6 or time for recompiling
    VNC, this can also be easily done, as always, by a mere hex-patch.

    >From the WinVNC source file "vncauth.c" we see that VNC's DES key is:
      unsigned char fixedkey[8] = {23,82,107,6,35,78,88,7};
    which is, in hex:
      17 52 6B 06 23 4E 58 07

    Using any hex-editor, one will find a unique occurence of that hex
    pattern in the WINVNC.EXE and VNCVIEWER.EXE binaries, and will be able
    to hex-change it for a custom key w/o any recompilation.

    -- 
    JCS - Jean-Christophe SERRE - INGECOM France - +33 (0)1.48.34.12.34
     
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