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The Security Account Manager (SAM) is a database file [1] in Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, 8.1, 10 and 11 that stores users' passwords. It can be used to authenticate local and remote users. Beginning with Windows 2000 SP4, Active Directory authenticates remote users.
Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. Windows Server operating systems include it as a set of processes and services . [ 1 ] [ 2 ] Originally, only centralized domain management used Active Directory.
Starting with Windows Server 2003, a DSRM password must be defined when the domain controller is promoted. Anyone with the password who has access to the domain controller can reboot the machine, copy and modify the Active Directory database, and reboot the server without leaving any trace of the activity.
Security Identifier (SID) is a unique, immutable identifier of a user account, user group, or other security principal in the Windows NT family of operating systems. A security principal has a single SID for life (in a given Windows domain), and all properties of the principal, including its name, are associated with the SID.
Authentication takes place on domain controllers. Each person who uses computers within a domain receives a unique user account that can then be assigned access to resources within the domain. Starting with Windows Server 2000, Active Directory is the Windows component in charge of maintaining that central database. [1]
The default behavior of caching hashes or credentials for offline use can be disabled by administrators, so this technique may not always work if a machine has been sufficiently hardened. Dumping the local user's account database . This database only contains user accounts local to the particular machine that was compromised.
The current Windows user information on the client computer is supplied by the web browser through a cryptographic exchange involving hashing with the Web server. If the authentication exchange initially fails to identify the user, the web browser will prompt the user for a Windows user account user name and password.
Should a folder of that name already exist, the profile-creation process will create a new one, typically named username.computername, on workgroup computers, or username.domainname on Active Directory member computers. Once a profile folder has been created, Windows will never automatically rename that folder.