*BSD News Article 62629


Return to BSD News archive

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. ;-)