Learn & practice AWS Hacking:<imgsrc="/.gitbook/assets/arte.png"alt=""data-size="line">[**HackTricks Training AWS Red Team Expert (ARTE)**](https://training.hacktricks.xyz/courses/arte)<imgsrc="/.gitbook/assets/arte.png"alt=""data-size="line">\
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[**RootedCON**](https://www.rootedcon.com/) is the most relevant cybersecurity event in **Spain** and one of the most important in **Europe**. With **the mission of promoting technical knowledge**, this congress is a boiling meeting point for technology and cybersecurity professionals in every discipline.
The Data Protection API (DPAPI) is primarily utilized within the Windows operating system for the **symmetric encryption of asymmetric private keys**, leveraging either user or system secrets as a significant source of entropy. This approach simplifies encryption for developers by enabling them to encrypt data using a key derived from the user's logon secrets or, for system encryption, the system's domain authentication secrets, thus obviating the need for developers to manage the protection of the encryption key themselves.
The DPAPI keys used for encrypting the user's RSA keys are stored under `%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Protect\{SID}` directory, where {SID} is the [**Security Identifier**](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security\_Identifier) **of that user**. **The DPAPI key is stored in the same file as the master key that protects the users private keys**. It usually is 64 bytes of random data. (Notice that this directory is protected so you cannot list it using`dir` from the cmd, but you can list it from PS).
Usually **each master keys is an encrypted symmetric key that can decrypt other content**. Therefore, **extracting** the **encrypted Master Key** is interesting in order to **decrypt** later that **other content** encrypted with it.
Check the post [https://www.ired.team/offensive-security/credential-access-and-credential-dumping/reading-dpapi-encrypted-secrets-with-mimikatz-and-c++](https://www.ired.team/offensive-security/credential-access-and-credential-dumping/reading-dpapi-encrypted-secrets-with-mimikatz-and-c++#extracting-dpapi-backup-keys-with-domain-admin) for an example of how to extract the master key and decrypt it.
[SharpDPAPI](https://github.com/GhostPack/SharpDPAPI#sharpdpapi-1) is a C# port of some DPAPI functionality from [@gentilkiwi](https://twitter.com/gentilkiwi)'s [Mimikatz](https://github.com/gentilkiwi/mimikatz/) project.
[**HEKATOMB**](https://github.com/Processus-Thief/HEKATOMB) is a tool that automates the extraction of all users and computers from the LDAP directory and the extraction of domain controller backup key through RPC. The script will then resolve all computers ip address and perform a smbclient on all computers to retrieve all DPAPI blobs of all users and decrypt everything with domain backup key.
[**RootedCON**](https://www.rootedcon.com/) is the most relevant cybersecurity event in **Spain** and one of the most important in **Europe**. With **the mission of promoting technical knowledge**, this congress is a boiling meeting point for technology and cybersecurity professionals in every discipline.
Learn & practice AWS Hacking:<imgsrc="/.gitbook/assets/arte.png"alt=""data-size="line">[**HackTricks Training AWS Red Team Expert (ARTE)**](https://training.hacktricks.xyz/courses/arte)<imgsrc="/.gitbook/assets/arte.png"alt=""data-size="line">\
Learn & practice GCP Hacking: <imgsrc="/.gitbook/assets/grte.png"alt=""data-size="line">[**HackTricks Training GCP Red Team Expert (GRTE)**<imgsrc="/.gitbook/assets/grte.png"alt=""data-size="line">](https://training.hacktricks.xyz/courses/grte)
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* **Share hacking tricks by submitting PRs to the** [**HackTricks**](https://github.com/carlospolop/hacktricks) and [**HackTricks Cloud**](https://github.com/carlospolop/hacktricks-cloud) github repos.