| Description: | libxcrypt is a modern library for one-way hashing of passwords. It
supports DES, MD5, SHA-2-256, SHA-2-512, and bcrypt-based password
hashes, and provides the traditional Unix 'crypt' and 'crypt_r'
interfaces, as well as a set of extended interfaces pioneered by
Openwall Linux, 'crypt_rn', 'crypt_ra', 'crypt_gensalt',
'crypt_gensalt_rn', and 'crypt_gensalt_ra'.
libxcrypt is intended to be used by login(1), passwd(1), and other
similar programs; that is, to hash a small number of passwords during
an interactive authentication dialogue with a human. It is not
suitable for use in bulk password-cracking applications, or in any
other situation where speed is more important than careful handling of
sensitive data. However, it *is* intended to be fast and lightweight
enough for use in servers that must field thousands of login attempts
per minute.
On Linux-based systems, by default libxcrypt will be binary backward
compatible with the libcrypt.so.1 shipped as part of the GNU C Library.
This means that all existing binary executables linked against glibc's
libcrypt should work unmodified with this library's libcrypt.so.1. We
have taken pains to provide exactly the same "symbol versions" as were
used by glibc on various CPU architectures, and to account for the
variety of ways in which the Openwall extensions were patched into
glibc's libcrypt by some Linux distributions. (For instance,
compatibility symlinks for SuSE's "libowcrypt" are provided.)
However, the converse is not true: programs linked against libxcrypt
will not work with glibc's libcrypt. Also, programs that use certain
legacy APIs supplied by glibc's libcrypt ('encrypt', 'encrypt_r',
'setkey', 'setkey_r', and 'fcrypt') cannot be compiled against libxcrypt. |
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