[SriniK]

Yup. Right on - +5

I am not familiar with windows password scheme but it would be crazy if windows just relied on the hash. Few *nix machines that I deal with have 128 bit salt + password.

Even wifi-wpa, blackberry and iphones are doing password strengthening to make brute force method more challenging.

As most of us are familiar with, most vulnerable part of the security is us human beings picking the passwords. Underneath algorithms(hashing) are pretty well devised and solid when used properly.