7 Apr
2003
7 Apr
'03
16:11
On Monday 07 April 2003 12:15, fsanta wrote:
But I want to find out what their password was. Can I do that? Is there something which will hack into /etc/shadow and decipher it?
No there isn't. The strings in /etc/shadow aren't encrypted versions of the password, they are encrypted strings of zeros, with the password used as encryption key. It's a one way encryption. The best you can hope to do is use a tool that will test a large number of keys, and hope you find one that matches. James mentioned John the ripper, and there's also cracklib, which I believe SuSE use in their security check to find weak password.