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EntityQ4050521· pop 9· linked from 331 articles

Also known as SAM Lock Tool

thumbnail|Screenshot of the Syskey utility on the Windows 8.1 operating system requesting the user to enter a password

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operating system
Q486487

via Wikidata · CC0

~2 min read

Encyclopedic overview

6 sections
Contents
  • History
  • Security issues
  • The "Syskey Bug"
  • Use as ransomware
  • See also
  • References

thumbnail|Screenshot of the Syskey utility on the Windows 8.1 operating system requesting the user to enter a password

The SAM Lock Tool, better known as Syskey (the name of its executable file), is a discontinued component of Windows NT that encrypts the Security Account Manager (SAM) database using a 128-bit RC4 encryption key.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Syskey” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.