The /etc/shadow file stores a lot of important settings for passwords on Linux systems, ... Linux systems administrator, security engineer and Linux journalist for most of her 30-year career.

For modern Linux implementation ... Keep in mind, however, that without that salt value, someone looking at the shadow file would be able to tell which accounts were using the same password ...

The usermod command allows you to make a lot of different changes to user accounts without having to carefully edit files like /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow and /etc/group ...

Critical Linux vulnerabilities that expose password hashes on millions of systems. Learn how to protect your data now!

Besides the four belonging to the Linux Kernel Organization ... The perpetrator also had copies of the /etc/shadow files, which overall contained 551 unique username and hashed password pairs.