Loading pasword hashes into the program

Windows Password Recovery - loading password hashes

User passwords in Windows systems are converted to special values - hashes. Hashes have a fixed size - 16 bytes - and can be stored in two repositories: SAM - for the regular accounts, SECURITY- for domain cached credentials, and Active Directory - for domain accounts.

The regular accounts that contain a username, password, and other auxiliary information are stored in the Windows NT registry; precisely, in the SAM (Security Account Manager) file. That file is located on the hard disk, in %windows%\system32\config. For example, С:\Windows\System32\Config\SAM.

Another way to access the SAM file is to launch a special program from a boot disk and then copy the file. Anyway, you need physical access to the target computer.
User passwords or, to be accurate, hashes are additionally encrypted with the SYSKEY utility, which stores its service data in the SYSTEM registry file. Thus, to extract hashes from SAM, you would also need the SYSTEM file, which is located in the same folder as SAM, and optional SECURITY file.

Domain accounts are stored in the Active Directory database. Usually, the Active Directory database is located in the file %Windows%\ntds\NTDS.DIT. The way user hashes are encrypted here is a bit different than that is in SAM, but the recovery would also require the SYSTEM file.

The program also has full support for domain cached credentials. Loading cached hashes is pretty much the same as if loading regular SAM passwords, except that the hashes located in SECURITY registry file.

There are several ways of loading hashes into Windows Password Recovery.

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Windows Password Recovery - loading password hashes

Import local hashes

Import hashes from a remote computer

Import hashes from binary files

Import hashes from system restore folders

Import hashes from project/text files