Technically, a password is a hash, not ciphertext. But that's quibbling. If
you want to create passwords, you need to use the C function crypt(). "man
crypt" will give you the details, including an explanation of how salt works.
Simple version: you pick the salt, any 2 character sequence from letters,
numerals, and a couple of special characters (. and /, I think). In a
password stored in /etc/passwd or /etc/shadow, the salt is the first 2
characters of the password, while the rest is the encoded hash.
The perl crypt function is a bit easier to use, so if you know perl, you
might start there with your experiments.
Also look at the docs that come with crack, the standard password cracker,
for more information about password encoding. Schneier's _Applied
Cryptography_ also has a small amount fo theoretical discussion about the
method and its limits.
At 01:34 PM 7/31/99 -0300, Miguel G. wrote:
>I need to know how to retrive cipher text from plain (right as in
>/etc/passwd) but there is a salt which I don't know how complete, could
>any one help me?
------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"---
Ray Olszewski -- Han Solo
Palo Alto, CA 94303-3603 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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