Many people might think the system admin can know a user's password. The answer is no.

Passwords are stored in an encrypted format, not the literal password string you provided. When you login and enter your password, the system just encrypts it and compare the encrypted string with the one stored on the system to see if they match. If they do match, you are allowed to login then.

Of course there are some programs available to try to find out what a password is from the encrypted string. But this might take months, if not years, to find it. Thus it's not likely people will do that.

The system admin cannot know your password, but he/she can change the password for you.


Tim

中文版

很多人可能會認為系統管理員能夠知道用戶的密碼。答案是否定的。

密碼是以加密的方式儲存的，不是你原先提供的密碼字串。當你登入與輸入密碼時，系統只是把密碼加密，並把加密後的字串和存在系統上的加密字串做比對，看看兩者是否相符。如果它們是一樣的，你就可以登入系統。

當然還是有一些現有的程式可以從加密字串找出密碼是什麼。但這個所花的時間沒有幾年也要幾個月。因此大概沒有人會這麼做。

系統管理員無法知道你的密碼，但可以替你更改密碼。

Tim