Every wondered how an unpriveledged user could read /etc/group,/etc/shadow files ??

Well I am sure all u Linux Newbies have a question in mind if we are not privileged enough to read the restricted /etc/group, /etc/shadow etc .. file and a situation comes wherein we need to read or edit them then how do we go about it ? Well i have an answer to this in Linux we have a command called vipw,vigr which are there to help you I wont go much in detail's here and would recommend to read the man page of the same