CRYPT(3) Linux Programmers Manual CRYPT(3)
NAME
crypt - password and data encryption
SYNOPSIS
#define _XOPEN_SOURCE
#include
char *crypt(const char *key, const char *salt);
Link with -lcrypt.
DESCRIPTION
crypt() is the password encryption function. It is based on the Data
Encryption Standard algorithm with variations intended (among other
things) to discourage use of hardware implementations of a key search.
key is a users typed password.
salt is a two-character string chosen from the set [azAZ09./]. This
string is used to perturb the algorithm in one of 4096 different ways.
By taking the lowest 7 bits of each of the first eight characters of
the key, a 56-bit key is obtained. This 56-bit key is used to encrypt
repeatedly a constant string (usually a string consisting of all
zeros). The returned value points to the encrypted password, a series
of 13 printable ASCII characters (the first two characters represent
the salt itself). The return value points to static data whose content
is overwritten by each call.
Warning: The key space consists of 2**56 equal 7.2e16 possible values.
Exhaustive searches of this key space are possible using massively par
allel computers. Software, such as crack(1), is available which will
search the portion of this key space that is generally used by humans
for passwords. Hence, password selection should, at minimum, avoid
common words and names. The use of a passwd(1) program that checks for
crackable passwords during the selection process is recommended.
The DES algorithm itself has a few quirks which make the use of the
crypt() interface a very poor choice for anything other than password
authentication. If you are planning on using the crypt() interface for
a cryptography project, dont do it: get a good book on encryption and
one of the widely available DES libraries.
RETURN VALUE
A pointer to the encrypted password is returned. On error, NULL is
returned.
ERRORS
ENOSYS The crypt() function was not implemented, probably because of
U.S.A. export restrictions.
CONFORMING TO
SVr4, 4.3BSD, POSIX.1-2001.
NOTES
Glibc Notes
The glibc2 version of this function supports additional encryption
algorithms.
If salt is a character string starting with the characters "$id$" fol
lowed by a string terminated by "$":
$id$salt$encrypted
then instead of using the DES machine, id identifies the encryption
method used and this then determines how the rest of the password
string is interpreted. The following values of id are supported:
ID | Method
-------------------------------------------------
1 | MD5
2a | Blowfish (on some Linux distributions)
5 | SHA-256 (since glibc 2.7)
6 | SHA-512 (since glibc 2.7)
So $5$salt$encrypted is an SHA-256 encoded password and
$6$salt$encrypted is an SHA-512 encoded one.
"salt" stands for the up to 16 characters following "$id$" in the salt.
The encrypted part of the password string is the actual computed pass
word. The size of this string is fixed:
MD5 | 22 characters
SHA-256 | 43 characters
SHA-512 | 86 characters
The characters in "salt" and "encrypted" are drawn from the set
[azAZ09./]. In the SHA implementation the entire key is significant
(instead of only the first 8 bytes in MD5).
SEE ALSO
login(1), passwd(1), encrypt(3), getpass(3), passwd(5), fea
ture_test_macros(7)
COLOPHON
This page is part of release 3.05 of the Linux man-pages project. A
description of the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.
2008-07-10 CRYPT(3)
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