Waraxe IT Security Portal

andyha · Beginner

Ok, so I'm new and not in complete control yet

I have a PC with an unkknown admin password.

I have extracted the sam and system files using BartPE and copied to another box on my network.

If I throw the sam file at SamInside I get different hashes to those that I get if I use Caine.

This challenges my understanding of how this works - I though the hashes were a direcr representation of the password - how can the same password (within the Sam file) result in different hashes?

Any thoughts of have I got it completely wrong

Thanks

A

gibbocool · Advanced user

A password will always hash the same if the algorithm is the same. So what you have here makes me think that you have two different hashing algorithms. However, when cracking hashes it is possible but extremely unlikely that you can find two different words that have the exact same hash.

andyha · Beginner

Thanks for taking the trouble to reply.

I would have though Caine and SamInside would use the same algorythm to get the hashes and would therefore return the same hashes

but the two program's dont.

Surely If I then try and use rainbow tables against the recovered hashes they are likely to return different passwords - apart from trying then how do I know if they are right - indeed how do I know which hashes are right.

Is there a more fool proof methof of extracting the hashes from the off target sam and system files?

Thanks again

Andrew