Microsoft begins removing NTLM on Windows 11 24H2, Server 2025 already

Back in October of 2023, Microsoft expressed its desire to disable NTLM (New Technology LAN Manager) authentication. With the reduction in usage of the NTLM protocol, the company eventually wanted to disable it. Following that, in June earlier this year, Microsoft confirmed that it was deprecating NTML beyond Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025 and thus, the feature would no longer be available in future Windows client and server versions.

However, it looks like the company is now in a bit of a rush as it has already begun removing NTLM on Windows 11 24H2 and Windows Server 2025. This week, it announced that NTLMv1 has been removed from the aforementioned Windows editions.

Microsoft has updated the notification on its deprecated features page which now says:

All versions of NTLM, including LANMAN, NTLMv1, and NTLMv2, are no longer under active feature development and are deprecated. Use of NTLM will continue to work in the next release of Windows Server and the next annual release of Windows. Calls to NTLM should be replaced by calls to Negotiate, which will try to authenticate with Kerberos and only fall back to NTLM when necessary.

[Update - November 2024]: NTLMv1 is removed starting in Windows 11, version 24H2 and Windows Server 20205[sic].

The company has also informed about it on its removed features page:

NTLMv1 is removed starting in Windows 11, version 24H2 and Windows Server 2025.

NTLM has shown how vulnerable it is in modern times and a recent example is 0patch issuing an unofficial micro-patch for such a security flaw.

Aside from NTLMv1, another security feature has also been removed on Windows 11 24H2. First announced back in 2022, the company has confirmed that it has now removed Windows Information Protection (WIP) or enterprise data protection (EDP). The feature was meant to protect against accidental data leaks. Microsoft writes:

Windows Information Protection is removed starting in Windows 11, version 24H2.

You can find the list of removed features here on Microsoft's official site.

Source

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