Not long ago, a news appeared on the network, saying that foreign Windows experts found that using the Win 2000 installation CD to start the computer can not enter the Windows XP administrator password into the Windows XP Recovery Console mode.
Is it true? The author did some testing. Wndows XP version
use the Windows XP Proessional, Windows 2000 SP3 integrated version of Simplified Chinese version of Windows Proessional. I first installed Windows XP Proessional on the C drive (FAT322 file system), and set the Administraor account password when installing. In order to confirm that the Administrator password has been set successfully, I switched to the classic Windows login mode, and then log in using the Adndnistrato account. It can be seen that the password is already required when logging in, and the password setting of the Administrator account is no problem.
restarted the computer, use Windows 2000 Poessional installation CD-ROM guide, installation selection screen choose to repair Windows 2000 (press R) ;, and then choose to use fault repair console (press the C key) in Wndows2000, system Will scan the existing Window2000/XP version. Since the author has only one operating system, only one login option (l:C:Windows) is listed. Press l from the keyboard, then press Enter. At this time, as it is reported abroad, Window XP does not require the administrator password to be entered, but directly logs into the Recovery Console mode (if you are using the Windows XP installation CD) Startup, it is required to enter the administrator password. The administrator here refers to the system's built-in Administraor account). Anyone familiar with Windows knows that the Recovery Console can perform any system-level operations such as copying, moving, deleting files, starting, stopping services, and even destructive operations such as formatting and repartitioning.
Next, I installed the SPI for the Windows XP patch, using the operating WindowS 2000 installation CD-ROM guide, repeat the above again, found the same results, or no password input requirements, since previously using the FAT32 file system The author guessed whether this was caused by the FAT3Z file system. Then use the Convert command in Wndows XP to convert the FAT3Z file system to the NTFS file system, then use the Windows 2000 installation CD to boot again, repeat the above operation, and find the same result, there is still no password input request. It seems that this vulnerability is really there.
should be noted that, for various reasons, some of the market's Windows 2000 installation CD-ROM can not fault console login option appear, so it can not take advantage of this loophole. At the same time, due to the limitations of the faulty console mode itself, this vulnerability cannot be exploited from the network. In other words, this vulnerability is limited to a single machine, so the harm is not very large.
also use the integrated Wndows 2000 Server SP3 English the official version of the CD-ROM, identify vulnerabilities still exist, it seems that not only is the Chinese version of the existence of this problem, this problem also exists in English.
Note: Due to the author as well as a Windows 98, can not convert the C drive to the NTFS file system. So the test based on the NTFS file system was tested in the VMware virtual machine.