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Date:      Sat, 27 Jun 1998 15:10:01 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>
To:        freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: bin/7090: crypt(3) partially returns raw password when salt isn't null-terminated 
Message-ID:  <199806272210.PAA09126@freefall.freebsd.org>

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The following reply was made to PR ports/7090; it has been noted by GNATS.

From: Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>
To: Just Another Perl Hacker <japh@gol.com>
Cc: FreeBSD-bugs@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: bin/7090: crypt(3) partially returns raw password when salt isn't null-terminated 
Date: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 00:00:18 +0200

 >It is therefore FreeBSD's fault in not expecting non-terminated salts,
 >while providing a compatible API with an incompatible behaviour which
 >results the blatantly wrong output.  You missed my point.
 
 No I didn't, I carefully surveyed the issue back in 1994 when I
 wrote the MD5 based crypt(3), and found that only very few programs
 were brain-damaged enough to peek into the internals of the crypt
 implementation this way.
 
 Most sane users simply pass the entrypted password they have found
 in the passwd file as salt arg to crypt, which means that the
 crypt(3) can chew it up any way it wants to, and you will work both
 with the "old DES", which you refer to, the "new DES" which takes
 a 9 character salt or the MD5 based "$1$" one which takes a 12 char
 salt or the OpenBSD "$2a$" SHS based with has a salt longer than
 the number of atoms in the universe...
 
 Remember: "Be conservative in what you send and liberal in what you
 expect".
 
 QED: xlock has no business knowing that salts are X characters for any
 value of X.
 
 --
 Poul-Henning Kamp             FreeBSD coreteam member
 phk@FreeBSD.ORG               "Real hackers run -current on their laptop."
 "ttyv0" -- What UNIX calls a $20K state-of-the-art, 3D, hi-res color terminal

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