Active directory where does our credentials stored?

Asked By Capri 0 points N/A Posted on - 09/30/2011

Hi all,

Active directory where does our credentials stored?

We have a Domain with 100+ systems and i know that every system while login the users credentials are authenticated from the Domain controller.

What i want to understand is where are these credentials stored?

How secure are they?

Thanks you

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Answered By stephen1 10 points N/A #84432

Active directory where does our credentials stored?

Hey Capri,

By default Windows 2000, XP and 2003 systems in a domain or Active Directory tree cache the passwords and credentials of previously logged in users. This is done so that the users can still login again if the Domain Controller or ADS tree can not be reached either because of Controller failure or network problems.

These cached passwords are stored as hashes in the local systems registry at the values HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESECURITYCACHENL$1 through NL$10. Unless the ACL is changed these values require SYSTEM level privileges to access (you can set it so an admin account can read them but you would still want to use a tool to parse out the data).

They are not much secured enough as they can easily be access by the registry keys of the windows.

Hope this helped…..

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• Posted on - 10/17/2011
• Question Category: Active Directory