Mike Miller wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2004, Scot Jenkins wrote:
> 
> >> Nope, it's exactly right.  That's how crypt()-based authentication 
> >> works, precisely.  It needs to know what salt the original password was 
> >> encrypted with, so it's the first two characters of the encrypted 
> >> password.  It crypt()s the attempted password (from the authentication 
> >> attempt) with the same salt, and if the two match, the password must be 
> >> the same (theoretically).
> >
> > Would this explain the "$1$" string that starts all md5 password values 
> > in /etc/shadow? -- scot
> 
> That's not how it is on my system - every password begins with a different 
> two-character salt string.  Does 'crypt' use md5?  I think it uses 
> something else, but I'm not 100% on that.

md5 passwords start with "$1$", at least they do on Linux (/etc/shadow)
and FreeBSD (/etc/master.passwd) systems.
crypt passwords would start with the 2 char salt.
-- 
scot

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