nFront Password Filter is a password policy tool that prevents the use of weak, easily hacked passwords for Windows Active Directory. nFront Password Filter allows network administrators to create and enforce multiple granular password policies within a single Windows domain. nFront Password Filter can reject non-compliant passwords before they are allowed on the network. nFront Password Filter can scan a new password against over 2 million common passwords in less than 1 second. Also included is a client that lists the user’s specific password policy rules. All configuration is done via Group Policies (GPO) and the design contains no single point of failure and no “password policy server.” nFront Password Filter is used by many companies to meet SOX, PCI and HIPAA password compliance requirements.
Passwords. Everyone on your corporate network has one. How weak is the weakest password?
Having a good password policy that is enforced across all users is fundamental to good security practices. You are probably spending money on firewalls, anti-virus, encryption and data leakage products. However, if you are using the built-in Windows Password Policy you might as well burn the money you are spending for all the security software and devices.
nFront Password Filter is a password policy enforcement tool for Windows Active Directory that allows up to 10 different password policies in the same Windows domain. Each password policy has many granular settings and can be associated with one or more global or universal security groups. nFront Password Filter allows you to strengthen network security by preventing the use of weak, easily hacked passwords.
Passwords can be compromised in a number of ways. There are software tools to "guess" passwords. Essentially there are 4 categories of tools:
Here is a nice list of different password cracking tools
There are DLL injection tools that can retrieve the database of hashed passwords. Please note that hashed passwords are not the same as encrypted passwords. Encrypted passwords can be decrypted given the shared secret or private key. However, hashed passwords cannot be reverse engineered. So what is the danger of a thief getting the hashes. A lot! There are tools like Rainbow Crackers which can crack any 14 character or less password in a matter of minutes if you can provide the password hash. There are websites where you an paste a captured hash and they will use their computing power to crack the LanMan or MD5 hash for you. Click here to read more...
Windows gives you the tools to control password length, history and expiration, but no good controls to enforce the use of reasonable passwords that are not easily hacked. Without nFront Password Filter it is highly likely that weak, easily cracked passwords are allowed on your network.
Consider the following standard Windows policy:
THE WINDOWS PASSWORD POLICY ABOVE DOES NOT PREVENT ANY OF THE FOLLOWING PASSWORDS
aaaaaaaa
abcdefgh
123456
januarypw
februarypw
march123
myuserid
mydogsname
qwerty123
EVEN IF YOU ENABLE WINDOWS COMPLEXITY YOU HAVE PASSWORDS LIKE THIS:
Password1
Microsoft1
Summer2019
Welcome1
Company1
LetMeIn1
Each policy in nFront Password Filter has over 40 settings. You can enforce specific requirements based on character types. There are several rules to break typical user patterns. The most effective rule is the dictionary checking rule. The filter can check million of words in less than one second.
To see a more exact comparison of settings see these links:
nFront Password Filter versus the Windows 2003 Password Policy
nFront Password Filter versus Windows 2008/2012/2016/2019 Password Policies
nFront Password Filter is controlled using a single Group Policy Object configuration. After installation of the software on all domain controllers, simply create a new GPO, load one of our provided templates (ADM and ADMX templates provided) and configure your policies. It's that easy!
nFront Password Filter is controlled by a single GPO, not a bunch of confusing GPOs all over the place. You can associate any policy in the MPE version with one or more security groups or organizational units. Nested groups are supported. Thus, you can easily use the same groups that you have created for resource security to control password security. No need to re-organize your OU structure to support your password policies. No need to run Resultant Set of Policy to see who gets what policy. No need to edit multiple GPOs all over the place or figure the best policy precedence order such that one policy does not negate the other.
nFront Password Filter gives you granular control over your password policies. It can put min and max limits on specific types of characters, reject passwords that contain userids/usernames and even check a new password against a multi-language dictionary with over 2 million words in less than 1 second.
Windows 2008, Windows 2012, Windows 2016, and Windows 2019 support multiple password policies in the same domain. However, the policy settings are the same basic policies that are in Windows 2000 and Windows 2003. The only thing granular about fine-grained policies is the ability to apply them to different OUs. The policies do not have granular rules. You can set the minimum length, min/max age, history and complexity but still not stop passwords like Password1. The settings are not robust enough to prevent the use of weak and easily cracked passwords. The settings are also cumbersome to put in place with no GUI to manage the settings.
nFront Password Filter MPE allows you to have up to 6 different password policies in the same Windows domain. Each policy can be associated with one or more security groups and/or OUs. You can have strong password polices for Domain Administrators and those with access to more privileged information (credit card data, tax information, etc.). You can also associate weaker policy with other groups like "Mainframe Users."
Suppose you sync your Windows passwords with UNIX or AS/400 or other mainframe systems. You do not want a one-size fits-all password policy that has to be dumbed down to the least common denominator. System like UNIX or mainframes often truncate passwords longer than 8 or 12 characters. Furthermore, such systems often do not accept certain special characters. With nFront Password Filter you can control the special characters which are accepted or block the use of any special characters.
Passphrases are simply long passwords like "The dog ate my newspaper." or "I love Chocolate!" Such phrases make great passwords because they are long and long passwords are generally always superior to shorter ones. You can configure nFront Password Filter to require a longer length for the password and require a minimimum number of spaces to be used in the password. This should get you well on your way to the correct horse battery staple
passphrases you want to see on your network.
Since passphrases typically contain dictionay words, you can skip dictionary checking for passwords over a specified number of characters. So long passwords may contain dictionary words but short passwords may not.
The filter also supports a feature called Length Based Aging. You can use this to incentivize your users to use passphrases or longer passwords. For example, you may decide that users can keep passwords for one year if the passwords are over 20 characters but passwords that are 10-15 characters must be changed every 90 days.
nFront Password Filter is not some set of Java rules on a website that are easily bypassed. nFront Password Filter is integrated into the operating system and runs as a thread under the local security authority (the lsass.ese process). The polices you create cannot be bypassed with an alternative password change mechanism.
Writing a custom passfilt.dll is not a trivial process and is much more involved than a simple win32 application. The custom password filter must interface to the Local Security Authority (the lsass.exe process) and runs as a thread of the LSA. You cannot afford a bad line of code or an overlooked exception. A bad line of code can quickly mean a BSOD (blue screen of death). A memory leak or failure to use exception handing and secure coding techniques can deal to a security vulnerability and possible exploitation. A passfilt.dll works on the password in Unicode clear text and care must be taken to properly destroy the memory used by such buffers.
We got started in 2001 writing custom password filters for many different organizations. After noticing many similarities among the requests we decided to write a "configurable customer password filter." We were the first to introduce a password filter controlled by a group policy. In 2005, we were the first to release a 64-bit password filter. We were the first company to put a password strength meter on the Windows change password screen. Currently we are the only company to offer rules for length-based password aging (e.g. longer passwords can be kept for a longer period of time).
You should contemplate the following questions if you are considering the development of a custom passfilt:
nFront Password Filter goes beyond giving you control over character types and includes a very fast dictionary check feature. In less than 1 second, nFront Password Filter can scan a 2 million word dictionary and ensure that the user's proposed new password is not contained in the dictionary file!
nFront Password Filter ships with a 27,000 word customizable, plain-text dictionary. The dictionary check feature looks for a case-insensitive exact match (instead of a substring match) between the proposed new password and each entry in the dictionary. The substring search feature can be enable to look for the dictionary word anywhere within the password. You can customize the dictionary by editing the file in Notepad or any other text editor of your choice.
nFront Password Filter comes with an optional client that you can deploy to end-user workstations. You can choose to include your own custom message to the end user or our default password rules or both. You can also display a password strength meter. All settings, of course, are controlled by GPO.
The client automatically works in multiple languages (English, German, French, Spanish and Italian are supported). It automatically reports the locale of the client workstation to the encrypted RPC service that supports the client. The service then formulates the password policy rules in the language appropriate to the language of the client operating system.
The client is compatible with Windows XP, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. On Windows XP it operates as a GINA stub DLL (which is the only method support my Microsoft). On Windows 7 and above it operates as a credential provider.