What is a plain text password and why can it be decypted?

Posted by Misha on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Misha
Published on 2012-11-06T03:08:57Z Indexed on 2012/11/06 5:06 UTC
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windows-8

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passwords

I was trying to understand the level of security offered by Windows picture passwords and ran across this claim on this website.

Some of our password recovery utilities already implement Windows 8 plain-text password decryption. The upcoming release of Windows Password Recovery is expected to have a full-fledged Vault analyzer and offline decoder.

I'm trying to understand what a plain text password is and if it is the default kind of password when I add a password to my account. My head is a bit muddled on this one so any clarification can help.

It seems there are passwords that can be decrypted and those that can't. What can be decrypted? Is the password I enter in Windows exposed?

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