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/etc/shadow

The Unix file that stores users' password hashes, readable only by the system.

On Unix-like systems /etc/shadow keeps each account's hashed (scrambled) password separate from the public account list, so ordinary users cannot read the hashes. It is a security improvement over older schemes, but the file itself is not encrypted — its contents are plainly stored on disk and its protection comes from file permissions. Anyone who can read the raw file can attempt to crack the hashes offline.