A better option is to set a strong password and set a local policy that the local admin account cannot be accessed over the network. I'm a big advocate of that in all environments and prevents the need for renaming the account to prevent automated attacks.

Thanks,
_________________________
Mike Wilson

-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Bradley [mailto:sbradcpa (at) pacbell (dot) net [email concealed]]
Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 2:39 PM
To: my.security.lists (at) gmail (dot) com [email concealed]
Cc: MustLive; bugtraq (at) securityfocus (dot) com [email concealed]
Subject: Re: Insufficient Authentication vulnerability in Asus notebook

We're talking XP Home here, right? A admin account without a password
cannot be access remotely over the internet, so if you have physical
access at all times of that Asus netbook it's arguably more secure in
some circumstances.

nameless wrote:
> Susan Bradley wrote:
>
>> 3. For XPs it's kinda handy to have a blank admin password when you
>> sometimes come in on a network and need to get to that particular
>> machine and you didn't set it up, otherwise you have to use the Admin
>> password boot disk trick and reset the password to blank.
>>
>
> You should only do the above recommendation, if you like to have your
> boxes owned.
>
> You should not have any administrative accounts named "Administrator"
> and _all_ administrative accounts should have a _STRONG_ password
> associated with them.
>
> No exceptions.
>
> Password safes are available at no charge. If you somehow forget your
> password, you can always reset it via AD or resetting the SAM.
>
>
>

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