Microsoft to eliminate RC4 cipher after 25 years; obsolete encryption enabled easy password cracking due to weak MD4 hashing, no salt, single iteration

Microsoft to eliminate RC4 cipher after 25 years; obsolete encryption enabled easy password cracking due to weak MD4 hashing, no salt, single iteration—admins urged to audit networks now.

Microsoft will finally kill obsolete cipher that has wreaked decades of havoc

Microsoft said it has steadily worked over the past decade to deprecate RC4, but that the task wasn’t easy. No salt, no iteration? Really? “The problem though is that it’s hard to kill off a cryptographic algorithm that is present in every OS that’s shipped for the last 25 years and was the default algorithm for so long, Steve Syfuhs, who runs Microsoft’s Windows Authentication team, wrote on Bluesky. “See,” he continued, “the problem is not that the algorithm exists. The problem is how the algo...