EC0-350 Question #64: Real Exam Question with Answer & Explanation

Harold works for Jacobson Unlimited in the IT department as the security manager. Harold has created a security policy requiring all employees to use complex 14 character passwords. Unfortunately, the members of management do not want to have to use such long complicated passwords so they tell Harold's boss this new password policy should not apply to them. To comply with the management's wishes, the IT department creates another Windows domain and moves all the management users to that domain. This new domain has a password policy only requiring 8 characters. Harold is concerned about having to accommodate the managers, but cannot do anything about it. Harold is also concerned about using LanManager security on his network instead of NTLM or NTLMv2, but the many legacy applications on the network prevent using the more secure NTLM and NTLMv2. Harold pulls the SAM files from the DC's on the original domain and the new domain using Pwdump6. Harold uses the password cracking software John the Ripper to crack users' passwords to make sure they are strong enough. Harold expects that the users' passwords in the original domain will take much longer to crack than the management's passwords in the new domain. After running the software, Harold discovers that the 14 character passwords only took a short time longer to crack than the 8 character passwords. Why did the 14 character passwords not take much longer to crack than the 8 character passwords?