Hashing is deterministic but one-way. You can easily generate the hash 2ac9cb... from Password123 , but there is no mathematical formula to reverse the hash back to the password.

When you decode the binary structure of these messages (specifically Type 3), you can extract information . This is because the protocol sends certain user details in cleartext to facilitate the connection.

Here's a simple example using Python's ntlm library:

But what does "decode NTLM" actually mean?

💡 Only decode or crack NTLM hashes on systems you own or have explicit permission to test. Unauthorized cracking is illegal.