On a system using shadowed passwords, the most correct permissions for /etc/passwd are ___ and the most correct permissions for /etc/shadow are…

The /etc/passwd file stores local accounts of the system. It is a readable text file and uses colons (:) to

separate the fields. This file helps with converting user IDs to names (and back). It is fine that all

users can read this file, but they should not be able to change fields. Therefore, the most correct

permissions for /etc/passwd are -rw-r–r–, which means that only the owner (root) can write to the

file, and everyone can read it. The /etc/shadow file contains information about the system’s users’

passwords. It is owned by user root and group shadow, and has 640 permissions. The password is

stored as a long string of characters, which is a combination of the hashing algorithm, optional salt

applied, and the hashed password itself. Other users are not allowed to read the file directly, to

prevent them from gathering hashed passwords of others. Therefore, the most correct permissions

for /etc/shadow are -r--------, which means that only the owner (root) can read the file, and no one

else can read or write to it. Reference: