crypt

[Dominic Dunlop]

In article <1238 at amelia.nas.nasa.gov> BOB at earth.arc.nasa.gov.arpa
(Bob Day) writes:
>I've just started writing an application in which I need crypt (the password
>encryption function), but much to my surprise I've discovered that it's not
>there (Xenix 2.2.3).  It is in the lint library (/usr/lib/llibc), but it's 
>not in any of the object libraries (/lib/[LMS]libc.a).  Does anyone know why 
>SCO left this one out?

Hmmm.  Could be that you've got the export version of Xenix.  We aliens
definitely don't get crypt(3X).  Instead we have to look in _UNIX System
Security_ by Kochan and Wood (Hayden, 1985) for a listing of a C language
implementation of the Data Encryption Standard, or in Scientific American,
November and December 1988, for a reasonably exhaustive discussion.
Unfortunately, neither of these sources detail how crypt(3X) peturbs the
algorithm in one of 4,096 different ways according to the ``salt'', so we
would still have difficulty if we wanted to reimplement.  Sigh.
-- 
Dominic Dunlop
domo at sphinx.co.uk  domo at riddle.uucp