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Date:      Mon, 20 Sep 1999 16:25:35 -0600
From:      Damien Tougas <dtougas@converging.net>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   How does this password encryption stuff work?
Message-ID:  <19990920162535.A96199@converging.net>

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I am trying to understand how password encryption works using a tool
such as the crypt command. I recently had to put an encrypted password
in a config file for a program, and was not sure how exactly to do it.
What I ended up doing was temorarily creating a user with the password
that I wanted, then copied the encrypted password from master.passwd
into the config file, then deleted the user. I know ther is a simpler
way to do this, but I do not understand how it works. If I use the
crypt program, I am required to put in a key. That means that the
encrypted password could be anything, which I suppose is good, but
how does the program then compare the password the user enters it with
the actual encrypted password, if it does non know what the key is?

Probably a very newbie question, but I just don't quite understand.

-- 
Damien Tougas
Converging Technology Solutions, Inc.
Phone: (780)469-1679
Fax: (780)461-5127
E-mail: dtougas@converging.net
http://www.converging.net


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