Protected Store is provided as part of CryptoAPI, in order to provide secure storage for sensitive information such as private keys and certificates. By design, the Protected Store should always encrypt the information using the strongest cryptography available on the machine. However, the Windows 2000 implementation uses 40-bit key to encrypt the Protected Store, even if stronger cryptography is installed on the machine.
A Protected Store is provided as part of CryptoAPI, in order to provide secure storage for sensitive information such as private keys and certificates. By design, the Protected Store should always encrypt the information using the strongest cryptography available on the machine. However, the Windows 2000 implementation uses 40-bit key to encrypt the Protected Store, even if stronger cryptography is installed on the machine. This vulnerability weakens the protection on the Protected Store, but does not eliminate it. An attacker would need to gain complete administrative ontrol over the machine that houses the Protected Store in order to gain access to it, and even then would still need to mount a brute-force cryptographic attack against it. However, customers who follow the recommended remediation for this vulnerability can ensure that such an attack would be significantly more difficult, if not impossible.
