Non-printing ASCII characters in WinXP Home, Admin Password - can't do it?

F

frank

In Microsoft's "Ask Us About...Security" article, by Joel Scambray,
May 2000, (found here:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...=/technet/columns/security/askus/au042400.asp
), in the 4th paragraph (after '2.'), it's stated that "...What is
lesser known is that the non-printing ASCII characters increase the
wordspace even further, and have the added benefit of preventing brute
force attacks by most password guessing software..."

I'm running WinXP Home. Logged in as a User that's a Computer
Administrator, I created a Limited User account named "Test" (without
the quotes). When giving the account a password, I typed in "456"
(without the quotes), and then I held down the Alt key on the
keyboard, and typed in "0008" (without the quotes) using the numeric
keypad (yes, numlock is on.) It *appeared* as if nothing more was
entered after the first 3 asterisks. But I would think that that is
exactly what should happen. After all, isn't Alt008 a non-printing
character?

I then click on OK (or Finish, or whatever), and logged out, and then
logged back in as Test, *entering as the password only "456"*. I was
able to log in just fine.

Why? Why was the password "456" not rejected as incorrect? Shouldn't
my password have been "456(then hold down the Alt key and type in 0008
on the numeric keypad)"?

My bottom line question is: How can I enter a password that has a
non-printing character in it for a Limited Account on WinXP Home
systems ? TIA for any advice.
 
M

Miha Pihler

Hi Frank,

Alt + 0008 produces backspace. Try with something else... Also try to stay
away from Alt + 13 .... Try using number higher then e.g. 20...
 

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