How to conduct a Password Audit in Active Directory (AD)

This guide outlines how to perform an Active Directory password audit using built-in Windows tools (ntdsutil, vssadmin), Impacket’s secretsdump for credential extraction (both remote and offline), and file transfer via SMB/robocopy, followed by password cracking with John the Ripper and Hashcat using custom and prebuilt rule sets. It concludes with methods to analyze cracked credentials and generate actionable metrics using DPAT (e.g., password length, reuse, privileged accounts), enabling SMEs to identify weak passwords and improve policy and training without expensive tooling.