GCIH Question #770: Real Exam Question with Answer & Explanation

The correct answer is C: unshadow. John the Ripper includes the 'unshadow' utility to merge /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow into a single file suitable for password cracking.

Vulnerability Exploitation & Privilege Escalation

Question

Which of the following programs is used by John the Ripper to merge the /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow files?

Options

Acombine
Bpwdump
Cunshadow
Dcat
Emerge

Explanation

John the Ripper includes the 'unshadow' utility to merge /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow into a single file suitable for password cracking.

Common mistakes.

A. 'combine' is not a utility included with John the Ripper or a standard Linux tool for merging password files.
B. 'pwdump' is a Windows-based tool for extracting NTLM password hashes from the SAM database, not a Linux shadow file merger.
D. 'cat' could technically concatenate files but does not produce the correctly formatted output required by John the Ripper for shadow file cracking.
E. 'merge' is not a recognized utility in the John the Ripper suite or a standard Linux command for this purpose.

Concept tested. John the Ripper unshadow utility for password cracking

Reference. https://www.openwall.com/john/doc/

Topics

#John the Ripper#unshadow#passwd shadow merge#password cracking

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