I've been trying to find a way to change a Windows account password directly using the password hash, but I haven't had much luck with the tools available. I did discover some interesting forks of Impacket on GitHub that might allow it through RPC, but I ran into an 'rpc_s_access_denied' error even when running the script with SYSTEM privileges and using the TrustedInstaller's token. My attempts to understand the logic behind dumping the hashes for reverse engineering haven't worked either. I'm reaching out to see if anyone has a solution for changing a user account password directly using just the hash, especially if I only have access to the SAM and SYSTEM files.
4 Answers
Have you considered what you're actually trying to achieve here? It might help to clarify your end goal so the community can provide more specific guidance.
If you're looking to restore a password from a backup, have you tried using Veeam? It can help you restore the password attribute for a user from an older Active Directory backup, which might be a safer route.
I get why you'd want to do this, but think about the potential risks. If someone could change a password without knowing it, they could access a user's data and then just revert the password back to cover their tracks. That’s dangerous, especially for security.
Keep in mind that hashes are designed to be one-way functions. You can create a hash from a password, but you can't derive the original password from the hash. This is why there aren't any reliable tools for reversing a hash back into a password.
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