How to Hack Locked Windows Laptop

Description:

Windows 8, windows 10, Windows 2012 servers comes with a default user logon screen and one of the feature in the logon screen is, the network selection user interface. This feature allows users to connect to the wireless network, turn on and off the network card etc without having to unlock the windows screen.

Risk:

This feature expose security risk, If the adversary has physical access to the machine even for few seconds, the adversary can open this network UI and connect the system to the attackers rouge wireless access point and can later perform MITM attack (as an example) and can potentially compromise the whole system.

 

Affected System:

Devices running Windows 8, windows 10, windows 2012 operating system with wireless card.

Recommendation:

To protect from this risk we need to disable this network UI on the log on screen and this can be achieved by doing it in the group policy or in the registry by going to

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System

and add DontDisplayNetworkSelectionUI=dword:00000001