> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://kyou00.gitbook.io/xyz/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://kyou00.gitbook.io/xyz/notes/view/windows/copying-sam-registry-hives.md).

# Copying SAM Registry Hives

**Copying SAM Registry Hives**

There are three registry hives that we can copy if we have local admin access on the target; each will have a specific purpose when we get to dumping and cracking the hashes. Here is a brief description of each in the table below:

| Registry Hive   | Description                                                                                                                                                |
| --------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| `hklm\sam`      | Contains the hashes associated with local account passwords. We will need the hashes so we can crack them and get the user account passwords in cleartext. |
| `hklm\system`   | Contains the system bootkey, which is used to encrypt the SAM database. We will need the bootkey to decrypt the SAM database.                              |
| `hklm\security` | Contains cached credentials for domain accounts. We may benefit from having this on a domain-joined Windows target.                                        |

We can create backups of these hives using the `reg.exe` utility.


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