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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: DES and MD5 passsword encryption
Date: 21 Feb 1996 23:22:20 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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Message-ID: <4gg9fc$l8t@uriah.heep.sax.de>
References: <Pine.LNX.3.91.960220183657.7144B-100000@gallup.cia-g.com>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch)
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Stephen Fisher <lithium@cia-g.com> writes:

> I am aware that FreeBSD uses MD5 for encrypting passwords, and there is a
> drop-in replacement to use DES encryption if you are in the U.S. [I am].

Also for people outside US (ftp.internat.freebsd.org).

> Is there any reason I would want to change to DES?  Are there pros/cons 
> to each?

You might chose DES in order to exchange encrypted passwords with
other machines.  A virus called NIS is very happy about this. :)

Default MD5 is believed to be a stronger encryption, but naturally,
the encrypted password strings are not exchangeable with machines
using another algorithm.

-- 
cheers, J"org

joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)