Re: secure storage in Active Directory

From: Joe Richards [MVP] (humorexpress_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 05/06/03 

Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 23:16:21 -0400

Hi Megan,

All data stored in AD is in the DIT file including the passwords which are stored as hashes. Group policy information
has links and version info in AD and the actual policies are stored in flat files in SYSVOL. 

--
Joe Richards
www.joeware.net
--
"megan" <zhongmeiyi@yahoo.com.sg> wrote in message news:57257a88.0305041854.13e0f162@posting.google.com...
> Hi,
>
> I understand that the Active Directory stores user data and passwords.
> How does it store these securely within its internal structure?
> i.e. how are the passwords protected? Through hashing? PKI?
>
> I've read that the Active Directory database is the ntds.dit, but
> I've yet to read anywhere that the passwords are stored there. I've
> also read about the NTLM (mostly for backward compatibility with NT
> systems), they store the password hash (either NTLM hash or NTLMv2 hash).
>
> Thanks in advance for any feedback.
> Megan