Vipw

vipw is a small computer program which enables a Unix system administrator to safely and securely edit user or group-related files while setting a proper lock to prevent other users from modifying them until they are saved by the current user.^[1]

The following is the list of user and group files that can be modified by the vipw utility.

• “/etc/passwd“: User account information.
• “/etc/shadow“: Secure user account information.
• “/etc/group“: Group account information.
• “/etc/gshadow“: Secure group account information.

This way, you can edit the system files securely using your favorite editor set to the $VISUAL or $EDITOR environment variable, instead of accessing them directly from the CLI editor like GNU Nano or VIM, which is insecure.