From: Deus, Attonbitus (ThorHammerofGod.com)
Date: Mon Jul 14 2003 - 15:29:42 CDT

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At 10:23 AM 7/14/2003, Dial Joe wrote:

>Hi Herman,
>I'll jump in on the renaming the administrator account.
>First My disclaimer: I am not a (fulltime) Windows Administrator and
>I don't even have an MCSE, but I have been told that renaming the
>Administrator account is of little value (Well, actually the MCSE
>that told me said *no* value) since the Security ID for the
>Administrator account is a well known value, and this is what
>hacking/cracking attempts use instead of the user name. My (so
>called) expert said that an NT/2K/XP script kiddie could connect to
>the machine and exploit it without even knowing that the
>Administrator account was renamed. I (personally) usually rename
>it, then create a disabled guest account called
>administrator, just in case someone gets physical access to the
>machine and wants to *let their fingers do the walking*...
>
>If anyone on this list can confirm or deny the value of renaming the
> Administrator account with more info than just *somebody who has
>been right before told me* then I would love for them to enlighten
>me.

Hey Joe- et al-

To be specific, renaming the administrator account when one can hit
the
machine with NetBIOS/CIFS is of little value for the reasons you
state. However, when it comes to deploying Terminal Services,
renaming the
administrator account has real value. Since a TS logon is a "local"
logon,
and the administrator account cannot be locked out for "local"
logons,
renaming the administrator for machines accessible via a TS logon can
most
definitely help thwart brute force attacks. IOW, if I know you have
not
renamed your admin account from "administrator," then I can hammer on
it
all day long knowing that the account won't be locked out.

T
  

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