Ownership
File permissions of the /etc/shadow password file
Got an issue with the file permissions of your /etc/shadow password file? Look no further and get it fixed.
Summary
The password files are an important cornerstone of the security of your Linux system. Commonly they are /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow, and installed by default. Sometimes we receive questions what the right permissions of these files should be. Therefore this blog post to have a look at the file permissions (and ownership) of both files.
Passwd file
The password file stores local accounts of the system. It is a readable text file and uses colons (:) to separate the fields. In this file the account names, identifiers, and other descriptive fields are stored. This file helps with converting user IDs to names (and back).