Which component is used to manage user accounts and passwords in hashed format?

• A. Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service
• B. Password Vault
• C. Security Accounts Manager (SAM) Database or AD
• D. Local User Registry

Answer: (C)

In Windows authentication, credentials are stored as hashes rather than plaintext, so the system can verify a password by hashing the input and comparing it to the stored value. For local accounts, that storage is the Security Accounts Manager (SAM) database, which contains the local user accounts and their hashed passwords. For domain accounts, the same idea applies within Active Directory—the password hashes are stored in the AD/NTDS database. So this option best fits the idea of managing user accounts and their passwords in hashed form because it covers both local and domain scenarios. The other choices don’t match this storage mechanism: a password vault holds encrypted credentials (not hashed), and the term “Local User Registry” isn’t the standard Windows credential store, while Lightweight Directory Service is a directory service, not the primary Windows password-hash store.