Re: Which password cipher ?

[Steven Bellovin <smb%cs.columbia.edu@localhost>]

On Dec 1, 2010, at 10:15 33PM, Matthew Mondor wrote:

> On Thu, 2 Dec 2010 00:02:32 +0100
> Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost> wrote:
> 
>> Blowfish or SHA1 based cypher the default and not ask. The only case
>> where the cipher really matters (other than security against cracking)
>> is interoperability with !NetBSD systems. In that case it only matters
> 
> I think I remember seeing a prefix in the hashes so that crypt(3) knows
> what mode it is dealing with.  If that still holds, copying an old
> or alien passwd file would most probably work as-is, IMO...

Correct, but a NetBSD file with SHA1 won't work on other systems.


                --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb