Thursday, March 03, 2011

Security+ Exam objectives 5.2

5.2 Explain basic hashing concepts.

Section 5.2 is all about the various types of hashes used today to provide for a unique identifier to be created, such as a hash, hash value, checksum, message authentication code, fingerprint, and others. You’ll of course want to know what a hash is, what it is used for, and how it provides an extra layer of security. Know that a hash is used to detect violations of integrity that may happen along the data transfer.

  •  SHA – Secure Hash Algorithm better known as SHA is used to ensure a message’s integrity. It is a one-way hash with a hash value of 160-bits that is often used with an encryption protocol. SHA-2 is a popular hash today but there are four standards of the hash that are used.
  • MD5 – A part of the Message Digest Algorithm (MDA), MD5 creates a hash value, is a one-way hash, and is also used for integrity purposes.
  • LANMAN – LANMAN is sometimes known as LM or LAN Manager, was used as a legacy storage mechanism. It was created by Microsoft to store passwords but today is completely obsolete as it was replaced by NTLM on Windows NT 4.0. It is not advised to use LANMAN on current OS.
  • NTLM – NTLM offers two different versions. NTLM v1 is used as a challenge-response protocol that uses a server-issued random challenge alongside with a user’s password to create two responses that are sent back to the server. NTLM v1 utilizes the LM and MD4 hashes throughout the process. NTLM v2 is said to be more complex because it uses the MD5 hash. Each version creates a nonreversible hash-like result which is highly secure. NTLM relies on the length of the password for even more security.
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