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Date:      Wed, 29 Nov 2000 12:26:56 +0100 (CET)
From:      "O. Hartmann" <ohartman@ipamzlx.physik.uni-mainz.de>
To:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Password Encryption Problems
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.21.0011291214300.60488-100000@ipamzlx.physik.uni-mainz.de>

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Dear Sirs.

Sometimes it seems really strange to me what FreeBSD does when encrypting
passwords. And as often I asked - there is no sufficient answer which type
of encryption, DES or MD5, to use.

Well, I swiched my libraries to use libdescrypt instead of libscrypt as
described in the manpages and I never user the exclusion of making the
default links when building a new system in /etc/make.conf. But I set
MAKE IDEA to YES.

So, lets explain what's the subject of my question. As I remember myself,
MD5 encrypted passwords are typically revealed in passwd by a $ at the beginning
of the sequence of encrypted passwords. DES encrypted passwords seems to
be really short in comparison to MD5 encrypted passwords. Last week, I installed
a new user and its password seems to be definitely encrypted by DES, but today's
encrypted passwords seems to be MD5 although I did not change anything and I
deleted first via vipw the password field to avoid FreeBSD checking and recognizing
that the prior password is MD5 encrypted (I realized, that if there is a password
MD5 encrypted and I change encryption libraries in the meanwhile, passwd seems
the encrypt the new given password also in MD5, but when deleting the passwordfield
or installing a new user when DES is alraedy activated, I get, better I got!, an
short DES encrypted password). When I did this and checked the passowrd again,
it seemed to be still MD5 encrypted. Why? Has anything changed in FreeBSD in the
meanwhile? I use NIS/YP, but it is not completely installed and running, but
the server on which I keep all the users and passwords is NIS server, maybe there
is the reason located ... or not?

In DES I have a password limitation of 8 characters, while FBSD's MD5 allows us
128 characters. But using NIS/YP limits again passwords and login to be limited
by 8 characters, so I ask myself what encryption service is the best choice ...

Thanks in advance,
Oliver

-
MfG 
O. Hartmann
-------------------------------------------------------------------
ohartman@ipamzlx.physik.uni-mainz.de

Klimadatenserver-Abteilung des IPA 
IT Netz- und Systembetreuung
Johannes Gutenberg-Universitaet Mainz
Becherweg 21
D-55099 Mainz
BRD/Germany

Tel: +496131/3924662
FAX: +496131/3923532



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