On Wed, 15 Jul 1998, Gerald C. Simmons wrote:

> Q: How do you migrate a passwd/master.passwd file from 1.2.X to 1.3.2?
> 
> Here's what I did. After figuring out the Sysinst DID NOT migrate my passwd
> files over from /etc.old, I cp'd master.passwd from /etc.old to /etc and
> rebooted. This seemed to rebuild the passwd.db & spwd.db files. However, when
> I tried to login - IT WORKED! If I had the exportable version of crypt, why
> did all my old passwords work???

Because there is no non-exportable version of the algorythms used for
password encription. We use the same algorythm UNIX has been using for the
past 25 or 30 years. It's also the same algorythm in use all over the
world.

The reason it's ok is that this algorythm is not reversable. Given an
encrypted password, the only way you can decrypt it is by guessing the
password, encrypting the guess, and getting lucky and finding your
encrypted version matches the one you're trying to guess.

All the export-controlled algorythms can easily decript encrypted text.
That's why they are export-controlled. :-)

Take care,

Bill