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Date:      Wed, 28 Feb 1996 21:31:25 -0800
From:      Paul Traina <pst@shockwave.com>
To:        Adam David <adam@veda.is>
Cc:        mark@grondar.ZA (Mark Murray), freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: New Dual-personality crypt 
Message-ID:  <199602290531.VAA01367@precipice.shockwave.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 29 Feb 1996 01:53:39 GMT." <199602290153.BAA23248@veda.is> 

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I would strongly suggest that users NOT be allowed to select their method
unless the sysadmin explicitly enables it... and I think a sysadmin would
be a fool to enable it (so I wouldn't even write the code to allow this,
however if someone has too much time on their hands, why not bloat out the
system further :-( ).

In any case, we should not ship with this mode enabled.


  From: Adam David <adam@veda.is>
  Subject: Re: New Dual-personality crypt
  >Nate Williams wrote:
  >> How can I force my passwords to be the old DES crypt function on a box
  >> that previously used MD5 crypt?  There are only two accounts on it (mine
  >> and root), but I'd like it to use DES like all of the other machines in
  >> the group.
  
  >This was a design point that I could not quite decide on. I decided
  >to go the route-of-least-change and keep the encryption algorithm that
  >was used to make the entry in the first place.
  
  >> Even after I've re-run passwd after installing the new libraries and
  >> binaries, it's still generating MD5 passwords instead of DES passwords.
  
  >I have been slowly getting round to putting a option in passwd(1)
  >to allow the user to select the encryption algorithm, but I am not
  >too sure how to deal with the case of the system without DES. I'm
  >sure I can come up with something.
  
  >> How do I force it to generate old-style DES passwords in spite of what
  >> the old passwords were, short of removing the password completely and
  >> then re-generating passwords?  Shouldn't the new routine 'generate'
  >> passwords using the default routines, but read passwords from both?
  
  >See above. I'd greatly appreciate some input on this. I'm kinda
  >prepared to go either way once I have some sort of idea what the
  >group would prefer. In the meanwhile, it is unfortunately only
  >possible to force DES by removing the old MD5 password.
  
  The encryption methods and default behaviour are site-admin decisions.
  Therefore it would be useful to see the following as possibilities:
  
  Admins to specify which encrytion methods are available for passwords, and se
>>t
    the default to one of  { same_as_previous, DES, MD5, ...<other_methods>... 
>>}
  If users are allowed to select which method, admins should be able to restric
>>t
    the choices to any subset of the methods recognised and handled by the site
>>,
    thus providing a means of transparent migration from one set of encryption
    methods to another.
  
  I understood the original dual-personality crypt announcement essentially to
  mean the same as I have stated here, except with the enforcement of {DES, MD5
>>}
  as the available set, and that ordinary users would typically have no choice
  over which method is used to generate the new password.
  
  --
  Adam David <adam@veda.is>
  



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