> [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: > Hi, below is a piece of code from the perl man pages. > > My question deals with: crypt PLAINTEXT, SALT > > Can someone please explain what the SALT is used for, HOW should it be set, > that is, > how many characters long it should be etc.
SALT is used to vary the hashing algorithm. In the standard Unix crypt it is 14 bits or 2 7 bit characters Follow the documentation on how to generate a SALT value. With 14 bits of salt there are 4096 possible hashes for any given PLAINTEXT. So it makes it much harder to precompute the hashes of dictionary words to mount a dictionary attack on a set of crypt hashes. This function is used to compute Unix password hashes. The first two characters of a Unix password entry are the SALT. The rest of the string is the hash value. -- Smoot Carl-Mitchell Consultant -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
