Re: Passwords

[Joe <joe@jretrading.com>]

On Tue, 17 Jan 2023 09:51:46 +0100
DdB <debianlist@potentially-spam.de-bruyn.de> wrote:

> Am 17.01.2023 um 07:14 schrieb Stanislav Vlasov:
> > вт, 17 янв. 2023 г. в 11:01, David <david.g_jones@ntlworld.com>:  
> >> Looking on the internet it says the passwords are stored in
> >> /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow  
> > 
> >  In /etc/shadow only password's hashes, some data, one-way
> > calculated from password string.
> >   
> >> The password string in /etc/shadow looks as if it's encoded, how
> >> can I read this string?  
> > 
> > You can't.  
> Everyone (and their friend) seem to know, how to work around this,
> which apparently is common debian knowledge (which is nice).

It's common Internet knowledge generally. Google will find you a
method, and will also find you a utility to fix a lost password in
Windows, if you can trust it.
> 
> But somehow, i feel there could be more caring about avoiding to teach
> future hackers by accident. Is this kind of lesson appropriate for a
> users list? - I doubt it.
>

First rule of security: keep your computer physically secure. If it's
portable, encrypt it, if it isn't, generally don't, because encryption
really is impossible to recover if the key is lost. My laptop isn't
encrypted, but all significant data is stored in a VeraCrypt volume. I
don't care if the machine is booted by a thief, because I'll never see
it again, and I have backup copies of the data.

-- 
Joe