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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.
While creating this post mimikatz was having problems with every action that interacted with DPAPI therefore **most of the examples and images were taken from**: [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)
Its primary use in the Windows operating system is to **perform symmetric encryption of asymmetric private keys**, using a user or system secret as a significant contribution of entropy.\
**DPAPI allows developers to encrypt keys using a symmetric key derived from the user's logon secrets**, or in the case of system encryption, using the system's domain authentication secrets.
This makes very easy to developer to **save encrypted data** in the computer **without** needing to **worry** how to **protect** the **encryption****key**.
* Personal data in any application programmatically protected with the API function CryptProtectData. For example, in Skype, Windows Rights Management Services, Windows Media, MSN messenger, Google Talk etc.
An example of a successful and clever way to protect data using DPAPI is the implementation of the auto-completion password encryption algorithm in Internet Explorer. To encrypt the login and password for a certain web page, it calls the CryptProtectData function, where in the optional entropy parameter it specifies the address of the web page. Thus, unless one knows the original URL where the password was entered, nobody, not even Internet Explorer itself, can decrypt that data back.
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.
You can find an example of how to encrypt and decrypt data with DAPI using mimikatz and C++ in [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++#using-dpapis-to-encrypt-decrypt-data-in-c)\
You can find an example on how to encrypt and decrypt data with DPAPI using C# in [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/security/how-to-use-data-protection](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/security/how-to-use-data-protection)
[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.
* Do you work in a **cybersecurity company**? Do you want to see your **company advertised in HackTricks**? or do you want to have access to the **latest version of the PEASS or download HackTricks in PDF**? Check the [**SUBSCRIPTION PLANS**](https://github.com/sponsors/carlospolop)!
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