DES-crypt password can be brute forced fairly easily (may take some hardware resources for 8 char fairly random passwords though... and some time). You can use tools like John the Ripper to aid in doing this. If you're using the tcb for HP-UX, then the passwords I believe may be salted triple-DES... and even trying to brute force that is practically impossible.
Modern UNIX systems use md5 or sha256 or similar encryption technique. They use special irreversible algorithm. So just from seeing the encrypted password, one will not be able to get the password. But, you still can bruteforce. It can take long time depending on the length and complexity of the password. Any reason why you are asking this?
---------- Post updated at 06:04 PM ---------- Previous update was at 06:00 PM ----------
If you use shadow password functionality, be aware you may get issues with some products, I had with some Reflection software, with SAS (9.1.3) etc... where these vendors designed their products on what is standard for HP: either no shadow, either trusted...
Nevertheless. works well... and found no real issues in 7(or 8?) years now
As vbe notes, changing a mature system to a Trusted system is not trivial. It takes planning and research. One of the side effects is that every user password needs resetting, and remote login to the root account is disabled.