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Date:      Sat, 16 Apr 2005 13:43:48 -0700 (PDT)
From:      =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Mikko_Ty=F6l=E4j=E4rvi?= <mbsd@pacbell.net>
To:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Encryption of login passwords--where and how is it done?
Message-ID:  <20050416134035.H34987@sotec.home>
In-Reply-To: <1197988274.20050416123145@wanadoo.fr>
References:  <1197988274.20050416123145@wanadoo.fr>

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On Sat, 16 Apr 2005, Anthony Atkielski wrote:

> Where's the actual code that accepts the input of a password and/or
> encrypts it?  I looked in login.c, but that only seems to call PAM or
> something; from that point on, I wasn't sure where to look.

Start with crypt(3).

> I'm especially interested in knowing how a very long password (up to the
> FreeBSD limit of, I think, 128 characters) is hashed and mashed into an
> encrypted password, but I'm also generally interested in the whole
> process.  I'd like to think that a 128-byte password consisting of
> random words and special characters would be just as secure as a
> shorter, completely random password, but that's only true if FreeBSD is
> hashing the entire 128-byte string in some cryptographically secure way
> in order to produce an encrypt password that is a function of every bit
> of the plaintext password.

Look in /usr/src/lib/libcrypt/.  The MD5 password hashing scheme is
found in crypt-md5.c (the whole password is being used, btw).

    $.02,
    /Mikko



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