System Account Manager

cryptography, operating system, security (SAM) A password

database stored as a registry file in Windows NT and

Windows 2000.

The System Account Manager (SAM) database stores users'

passwords in a hashed format. Since a hash function is

one-way, this provides some measure of security for the

storage of the passwords. In an attempt to enhance the

security of the SAM database against offline cracking,

Microsoft introduced the SYSKEY utility in Windows NT 4.0.

(2000-07-19)