LAN Manager

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The LAN Manager was an advanced Network Operating System (NOS) from Microsoft developed in cooperation with 3Com. It was designed to succeed 3Com's innovative 3+Share network server software which ran on top of MS-DOS.

LAN Manager is based on the OS/2 and NetBEUI protocol similar to its predecessors MS-NET for MS-DOS and Xenix-NET for MS-Xenix. There was also LAN Manager/X (LMX) for UNIX based systems. In 1990 Microsoft announced LAN Manager 2.0 with a lot of improvements. The latest version LAN Manager, 2.2, which included an MS-OS/2 1.31 base operating system, remained to be Microsoft's strategic server system until the release of Windows NT Server in early 1994.

Many vendors shipped licensed versions, including:

• 3Com 3+Open
• HP LAN Manager/X
• IBM LAN Server
• Tapestry Torus

[edit] Security Vulnerability

LAN Manager authentication uses a particularly weak method of hashing a user's password known as the LM hash algorithm.