Logon Banner – Displaying Warning Message

Legal notices can be set in Windows NT using the following Windows NT registry
keys.

Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Key: Software\Microsoft\Windows
NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon
add or modify the following values:

Name	Type	Value
LegalNoticeCaption	REG_SZ	Short Caption
LegalNoticeText	REG_SZ	max 255 chars
LogonPrompt	REG_SZ	displayed in standard logon screen
Welcome	REG_SZ	displayed in standard logon screen

If you want to simulate paragraphs in the Legal Notice text, enter the text
with a space where the paragraph should break. Edit the value using Binary and
replace the space character with 0D00 . Remember that
one letter of normal text is equal to four characters in the binary editor.

Windows 2000 does not seem to use the LegalNoticeCaption or LegalNoticeText
registry settings. I used the Local Security Policy console to set a legal
notice, and the above registry keys were empty although Windows 2000 was
displaying a legal notice and title.

• Click Start/Settings/Control Panel
  
• Double-click Administrative Tools / Local Security Settings / Local Policies
  / Security Options
  
• Set Message text for users attempting to log on
  
• Set Message title for users attempting to log on
  
• Logoff/Logon to test

This sets the local pc security policy. If
the PC is part of a domain, the domain security policy value will override if it
exists.

Without notice on each entry into the network (each workstation/server) via
such legal notice messages, one has little chance to prosecute intruders. CIAC
has published an informational article Creating
Login Banners covering the issue for various platforms in some detail.

Default message in windows is delivered is Welcome.
LegalNoticeCaption/LegalNoticeText create a text box displayed prior to logon
which one must respond “OK” to before one can continue the logon process. LogonPrompt is displayed in the standard logon screen
(this probably makes LogonPrompt less “distinct” and
less useful for legal notices purposes). The logon screen variables are
usually used to personalize the logon dialog such as setting the Welcome value
=”Welcome to Wayne’s Computer”. This works in Windows NT, Windows 2000 and
Windows XP.