The windows passwords can be accessed in a number of different ways. The most common way would be via accessing the Security Accounts Manager (SAM) file and obtaining the system passwords in their hashed form with a number of different tools. Alternatively passwords can be read from memory which has the added benefit of recovering the passwords in plain text and avoiding the cracking requirement. In order to understand the formats you’ll see when dumping Windows system hashes a brief overview of the different storage formats is required.
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