The Essential Guide to Understanding Password-Based Authentication

Even veteran IT pros don’t fully understand the authentication technologies used by Windows and other operating systems. With their deep knowledge of authentication protocols such as NTLM and Kerberos, hackers can steal your users' credentials and then secretly take your most valuable data. In this guide, Andy Green, a Digital Content Producer and security blogger at Varonis Systems, decodes hashing, encryption, challenge-response protocols, and other technologies underlying password-based authentication. Green also reviews the most common attacks, such as Pass the Hash, Dictionary, and Man in the Middle, which are used to subvert authentication checks. The guide is presented in an accessible Q and A format that will quickly give you the conceptual framework you’ll need to take on cyber thieves.