Cached Domain Credentials
When a Windows computer is joined to a domain, authentication of users is performed not against the local SAM database, but by querying the domain controller. From this description, we might be tempted to conclude that there won't be any useful credentials stored in the registry on a machine that is part of a domain; the users and their hashes don't actually exist on the local machine but rather on the domain controller. As it turns out, however, by default Windows does store domain credentials on client machines. The reason for this is simple: if the domain controller is unavailable for some reason, users would still like to be able to log into their machines using their credentials; for this reason Windows caches domain credentials of the last (by default) 10 users to log on to the machine. The exact number of cached logons is controlled by the value "CachedLogonCount" of HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\WinLogon . Cached Credentials in the Registr...