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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!nntp.coast.net!fu-berlin.de!news.belwue.de!news.dfn.de!news.uni-jena.de!news.HRZ.HAB-Weimar.DE!News.HTWM.De!news.tu-chemnitz.de!irz401!uriah.heep!news From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: YP/NIS on FreeBSD/Linux/NeXT Date: 20 Feb 1996 00:46:25 GMT Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden Lines: 27 Message-ID: <4gb5l1$d34@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <4ffaq7$7jg@myntti.helsinki.fi> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.3 kjellman@cc.helsinki.fi (Janne P Kjellman) writes: > Is there a difference in password coding with Free[BSD], Linux, > etc?? Most likely. According to the opinion of some US legal people, you can apparently shoot someone with the beloved DES encryption code, hence it accounts as ``ammunition'' and is restricted from being exported out of US. (Even if it's written outside, you can import, but not re-export it. Call it braindead if you want.) Hence FreeBSD's default passwort encryption is not DES. (Most likely, Linux' is neither, but i don't know.) Poul-Henning Kamp developed a password encryption algorithm based on the MD5 algorithm. This one is believed to be even stronger than DES, but naturally incompatible. The positive effect is that MD5 counts as ``authentication'' software only and is therefore not affected by the ammunition law. For a non-US plug-in source of DES and all the other stuff around it, have a look at ftp.internat.freebsd.org. -- 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. ;-)