Re: [VANILLA-LIST:2498] crypt needed for res-rsa

[Tom Holub <doosh@best.com>]

On Thu, Jul 15, 1999 at 02:42:52PM -0700, Keir Morgan wrote:
> Carlos spate:
>  
> > Quoting Jeffrey Nowakowski <jeffno@ccs.neu.edu>:
> > } 
> > } I'm confused.  What crypt is being talked about here, the command line
> > } crypt or the library crypt()?
> > 
> > Command line crypt to decrypt the tar.gz.crypt file.
> > 
> > } If it's the command line crypt, wouldn't it be trivial to make a
> > } command line version using the library call?
> > 
> > TAG! You're it.
>  
>   Aren't crypt (the program) and crypt() were two very different
> things? My understanding was that the crypt command uses a simple
> enigma based rotor engine to encrypt/decrypt data whereas crypt()
> is a salt perturbed implementation of DES.
>  
>   I believe that the crypt (program) is about as crackable
> as 'zip -e'.

Keir is correct on both counts (of course).  crypt(1) is an Enigma
cypher, extremely weak encryption that's a waste of time more than
anything, but is completely reversible.  crypt(3c) is a one-way hash
which loses information and is not useful for our purposes.
 -Tom