: : is there any Delphi component out there to recover Windows
: : NT/2000/XP passwords ?
: :
: :
: Probably not, because that would be considered to be a serious
: breach in the security of those OSes.
AFAIK, they are just storted in the registry. But, of course, they are stored hashed (e.g. they have been run through a secure hashing algorithm). The only thing you can do with these is crack them, normally through a dictionary attack although there may be other weaknesses in the hashing algorithm that make things easier. Of course, NT/2000/XP may put additional things in your way to stop you reading from that bit of the registry. But it may not.
Best tool I ever used related to WinNT/2000/XP passwords was a magic disk which booted into Linux, mounted the NTFS partition and wrote a new password hash directly into the registry. Saved someone who'd forgotten their password a headache...and beat the hell out of the rest of the guys around at the place I was working, who were still looking for password crackers.
Jonathan
###
for(74,117,115,116){$::a.=chr};(($_.='qwertyui')&&
(tr/yuiqwert/her anot/))for($::b);for($::c){$_.=$^X;
/(p.{2}l)/;$_=$1}$::b=~/(..)$/;print("$::a$::b $::c hack$1.");
