revealing user's pasword
 

hi,
as an administrator, we could reset users password, but could we discover the pasword?

Only by using brute force cracking (that's the whole point of passwords!). Or, you could hypnotise your users to help them remember... ;)

The short answer is no.

Out of curiosity, why are you trying to accomplish this?

just want to know how the system works. is this means that an administrator could not log in as a user without knowing his password or resetting his password.

lest say if the password could be brute force, how it could be done, there is nothing in "passwd" file.

Any password can be broken by brute force. Brute force simply means that every single possible combination of characters that could be used in a password will be tested. If we assume that a password is 10 characters long, and that there are 128 ASCII characters that could be used in the password, then there are 10^128 possible combinations to test using brute force.

If you are attempting to eavesdrop on users without their knowledge, that would be considered cracking, and would not be welcome on the LQ forums

No. root can always "su" to any user without password

the password hashes are stored in the /etc/shadow file instead

What an odd post, that being said all i have to do is ask users for their password, despite teling them not to give it me....

Unix users should never give their password to anyone, even an administrator, as root doesn't need it to impersonate as any user anyway.

Stoked this dude doesn't admin any computers I work on...

These machiens i am on are running VNC server but the service is screwed and doesn't start, shame really, they might learn some things here :)

But no, you should not be trying to access users accounts without their permission, i don't even know the standing on this (whether the account is considered company property, or whether it's protected by privacy laws). If my employer tried that, they'd be in trouble

Something to remember: if you 'su' into another user as root, the actions you perform will all have timestamps, but there will be no record of the user logging in, which is always suspicious.

I agree with cs-cam

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux-Security and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.