{"id":2903,"date":"2026-05-05T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ibvl.in\/index.php\/2026\/05\/05\/cleartext-passwords-in-ms-edge-in-2026-mon-may-4th\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T12:00:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T12:00:49","slug":"cleartext-passwords-in-ms-edge-in-2026-mon-may-4th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ibvl.in\/index.php\/2026\/05\/05\/cleartext-passwords-in-ms-edge-in-2026-mon-may-4th\/","title":{"rendered":"Cleartext Passwords in MS Edge? In 2026?, (Mon, May 4th)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Yup, that is for real.<\/p>\n<p>For me, this started with a post in X at\u00a0<span style=\"font-size:12pt\"><span style='font-family:\"Aptos\",sans-serif'>hxxps:\/\/x.com\/intcyberdigest\/status\/2051406295828250963?s=61 , which highlighted research by\u00a0<\/span><\/span><span class=\"r-18u37iz\"><a class=\"css-1jxf684 r-bcqeeo r-1ttztb7 r-qvutc0 r-poiln3 r-1wvb978 r-1ny4l3l r-1ddef8g r-tjvw6i r-1loqt21\" dir=\"ltr\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/L1v1ng0ffTh3L4N\" role=\"link\" style=\"color: rgb(29, 155, 240);\">@L1v1ng0ffTh3L4N<\/a>\u00a0that found exactly this issue.\u00a0 Edge stores all of your browser passwords in clear text, even if you haven&#8217;t used them in this session, y&#8217;know, just in case.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"r-18u37iz\">I figured, it couldn&#8217;t be that easy, right?\u00a0 But like so many things, yes, yes it was.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>To reproduce this<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Open Edge.\u00a0 Don&#8217;t browse anywhere, just open it<\/li>\n<li>Flip out to Task Manager, search for Edge, then expand that task<\/li>\n<li>Highlight the &#8220;browser&#8221; sub-task, right click, and choose &#8220;Create Memory Dump&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/isc.sans.edu\/diaryimages\/images\/dump_mem_from_process.png\" style=\"width: 800px; height: 728px;\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 40px;\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 40px;\">Navigate to where the DMP file is stored.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 40px;\">If you haven&#8217;t used <span style=\"font-family:Courier New,Courier,monospace;\">strings <\/span>before, you&#8217;re in for a treat.\u00a0 <span style=\"font-family:Courier New,Courier,monospace;\">Strings <\/span>is of course just part of most Linux distros, but you can easily get a copy for Windows as part of MS Sysinternals, at\u00a0https:\/\/learn.microsoft.com\/en-us\/sysinternals\/downloads\/strings<\/p>\n<p>\nNow let&#8217;s look for passwords!\u00a0 You could use strings and look for known credentials, just search for a known password and you will certainly find it.\u00a0 Or you can take advantage of the format of the saved data:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"font-family:Courier New,Courier,monospace;\">&lt;url of the site&gt;&lt;protocol&gt;&lt; &gt;&lt;userid&gt;&lt; &gt;password&gt;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So, searching for &#8220;&lt;tld&gt;&lt;protocol&gt;&#8221;, which in most cases is\u00a0&#8220;comhttps&#8221; (no spaces) will find most of them, and they&#8217;ll all be in one nicely formatted group no less.\u00a0 The command for that will be:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><span style=\"font-family:Courier New,Courier,monospace;\">strings -n 8 msedge.DMP | find &#8220;comhttps&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p>looking a bit down in the output (since comhttps does match more stuff in the memory dump than just the credential list), I see:<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: 40px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/isc.sans.edu\/diaryimages\/images\/password_dump.png\" style=\"width: 500px; height: 383px;\"><\/p>\n<p>As you can see, Edge isn&#8217;t\u00a0 my primary browser, but I do use it a fair bit for Azure work.\u00a0 And yes, this is a real session, so I cropped\/blurred out sensitive accounts and of course passwords.<\/p>\n<p>It really is that easy.<\/p>\n<p>And the ironic thing? \u00a0To view these same credentials in the browser, there&#8217;s a whole security theatre process where Edge wants your biometrics as proof before disclosing even the userid and site names &#8211; you know, &#8220;for security&#8221;. \u00a0All the while, the whole shot is in clear text, free for the looking\u00a0..<\/p>\n<p>Also as noted in the X post, Microsoft classifies this as &#8220;intended behaviour&#8221;.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure what manager or lawyer decided that, hopefully it wasn&#8217;t anyone in their security team.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, if the intent of this is to get me to use Firefox or Chrome, it&#8217;s working!!<\/p>\n<p>Have you seen a similar &#8220;strong front door \/ open window&#8221; security example in your forensics, please share in the comments (keeping any NDA&#8217;s etc in mind of course)<\/p>\n<p>===============<br \/>\nRob VandenBrink<br \/>\nrob@coherentsecurity.com<\/p>\n<p> (c) SANS Internet Storm Center. https:\/\/isc.sans.edu Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yup, that is for real. For me, this started with a post in X at\u00a0hxxps:\/\/x.com\/intcyberdigest\/status\/2051406295828250963?s=61 , which highlighted research by\u00a0@L1v1ng0ffTh3L4N\u00a0that found exactly this issue.\u00a0 Edge stores all of your browser passwords in clear text, even if you haven&#8217;t used them in this session, y&#8217;know, just in case. I figured, it couldn&#8217;t be that easy, right?\u00a0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-container-style":"default","site-container-layout":"default","site-sidebar-layout":"default","disable-article-header":"default","disable-site-header":"default","disable-site-footer":"default","disable-content-area-spacing":"default","footnotes":""},"categories":[90],"tags":[91],"class_list":["post-2903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Cleartext Passwords in MS Edge? In 2026?, (Mon, May 4th) - Imperative Business Ventures Limited<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.ibvl.in\/index.php\/2026\/05\/05\/cleartext-passwords-in-ms-edge-in-2026-mon-may-4th\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Cleartext Passwords in MS Edge? In 2026?, (Mon, May 4th) - Imperative Business Ventures Limited\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Yup, that is for real. For me, this started with a post in X at\u00a0hxxps:\/\/x.com\/intcyberdigest\/status\/2051406295828250963?s=61 , which highlighted research by\u00a0@L1v1ng0ffTh3L4N\u00a0that found exactly this issue.\u00a0 Edge stores all of your browser passwords in clear text, even if you haven&#8217;t used them in this session, y&#8217;know, just in case. 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