Before NTLM there was just LM
NTLM was made backward compatible with the older MS Lan Manager (P O donkey S) and had a separate LM hash table which used passwords split into 2x 7 char blocks & padded with nulls. Dictionary attack times for the 7 chars was never very long and if the 2nd block was all nulls it gave the same hash every time. I believe the backward compatiblility could only be turned off once the entire AD domain was using NTLM2.
This was back in the early '90s when DES (56 bit) was standard and the US didn't allow export of anything better than 40 bit.
Some things scar the memory for life.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
