Microsoft has published a 20-page white paper that details how the company secured its portion of eWeek's OpenHack 4 test.

The paper describes how encryption keys were stored securely, Internet Information Services configuration and hardening, what keys were modified in the Windows 2000 registry for additional security, and how the Microsoft SQL Server database machine was hardened.

It also describes how the IP Security policies on the Microsoft servers were configured to allow remote management using a VPN.

The paper ends by describing the clever trick of using Unicode characters entered using the Alt key and numeric keypad in passwords—Microsoft used this approach in OpenHack, and this technique makes brute-force password attacks extremely difficult.

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