How to access /etc/shadow file without root

It is readable only by the root user or super user.

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. The system I am using is a CentOS 7. Are these steps that I am following correct? Please let me know, and I can provide additional information if needed. Changing an owner group of such important file could even break some things, which is dangerous.

How to access /etc/shadow file without root

Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. I am reading a book on ethical hacking, and it has some examples in Python which I won't post here unless asked since this isn't Stack Overflow. They can't copy it, open it; etc. Is there some brute force method? I don't know anything about these, where can I learn? In order to understand how a hacker could access this file you have to think like a hacker, mainly outside the box, of what most would consider to be "normal" methods for accessing a file. I've seen many examples throughout my career where developers or unknowledgeable sysadmins have run applications such as Tomcat or Apache as root. These same methods can be used to augment the permissions on files as well, though a good hacker would not do something so obvious as to be detected, safer to read the contents of these files and stash them somewhere else or retrieve them from the box. Stack Overflow for Teams — Start collaborating and sharing organizational knowledge. Create a free Team Why Teams? Learn more about Teams.

This is by design, not because it couldn't, but because we've added code to explicitly prevent it from doing so.

It has been a while since I worked on anything PAM related, but I recently became interested in exploring how to convert the su binary to work with capabilities only, and not require it being setuid-root. Recall, in this environment , being root comes with no super user privilege. However, we shouldn't ever forget that root owns a lot of system files! That was a set of applications those of us, that originally developed Linux-PAM, wrote to prototype modules and libpam improvements against. I had a prototyping project related to libcap now and, while a couple of decades had elapsed, it was fun to take that code out for a spin again. Which is what we actually need to have su correctly function. In PURE1E mode the su program won't be running as setuid-root , but we want the code to authenticate other users

Ask questions, find answers and collaborate at work with Stack Overflow for Teams. Explore Teams. Connect and share knowledge within a single location that is structured and easy to search. I am reading a book on ethical hacking, and it has some examples in Python which I won't post here unless asked since this isn't Stack Overflow. They can't copy it, open it; etc. Is there some brute force method? I don't know anything about these, where can I learn? In order to understand how a hacker could access this file you have to think like a hacker, mainly outside the box, of what most would consider to be "normal" methods for accessing a file. I've seen many examples throughout my career where developers or unknowledgeable sysadmins have run applications such as Tomcat or Apache as root. These same methods can be used to augment the permissions on files as well, though a good hacker would not do something so obvious as to be detected, safer to read the contents of these files and stash them somewhere else or retrieve them from the box.

How to access /etc/shadow file without root

It is readable only by the root user or super user. To see this feature in action, access a root shell and run following commands. In Ubuntu Linux, by default root account is disabled. If you are following tutorial on Ubuntu Linux, access a super user shell and run following commands. But when we performed the same action from a root user or super user account, shell allowed to it. This security feature keeps encrypted passwords safe from unauthorized users and password cracking programs. In both files, this field represents login name and stores the exactly same information. When a new user account is created, both files are updated simultaneously. This field stores actual user password in encrypted form.

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The Overflow Blog. When a new user account is created, both files are updated simultaneously. Stack Overflow for Teams — Start collaborating and sharing organizational knowledge. Stack Overflow for Teams — Start collaborating and sharing organizational knowledge. They were useful for development purposes, but were never adopted as actual replacements for system tools, instead, folk modified the standard tools to support PAM abstractions. We can give it a try:. Are these steps that I am following correct? Above, we have used the capsh Nebek Did you see my edit? This security feature keeps encrypted passwords safe from unauthorized users and password cracking programs. This is to ensure we can run the in-tree version of capsh which uses modern API features of libcap that may not yet be part of your default install. This date is used as starting date or day in calculation by several commands and configuration files. Since libcap That was a set of applications those of us, that originally developed Linux-PAM, wrote to prototype modules and libpam improvements against. This field sets number of days in advance to display password expiration message.

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To see this feature in action, access a root shell and run following commands. We're always interested in debugging corner cases, improving this article and fixing source bugs. BitGen BitGen 8 8 bronze badges. Another problem here is that you gave this right to Nginx , a web server. Question feed. Except Guest post submission, for any other query such as adverting opportunity, product advertisement, feedback, suggestion, error reporting and technical issue or simply just say to hello mail us [email protected]. Ask Question. By default there is a grace period of seven days. We'll then demonstrate that our sucap version still works. Improve this answer.