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Re: Where is the key for the password files stored?



On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 10:36:16AM +0000, Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:
> In article <[🔎] Pine.LNX.4.44.0410251158400.25748-100000@nova.cs.tau.ac.il>,
> Micha Feigin  <michf@post.tau.ac.il> wrote:
> >Where is the key used to decrypt the passwords (shadow) files stored?
> >I want to reinstall an old redhat system with debian, but I wish to 
> >preserve old users and passwords to ease the transition process.
> 
> You can't decrypt passwords - because they are not crypted at all.
> The algorithm is just a one-way hash.
> 
> When you login, the password you enter is simply encrypted (one-way-
> hashed, really) again and compared with the one in the shadow file.
> The password in the shadow file is never decrypted as such.
> 
> Why not simply copy the relevant parts of the password and shadow
> files over, why do you want to decrypt first ?
> 

I wasn't looking to decrypt first. Since the passwords are hashed (I
thought encrypted, but it doesn't matter much for this purpose). I want
to take the password files from the old installation and drop them into
the new one in such a way that the users can use their old passwords. I
thought that there is a key somewhere that is used for comparing the
inserted password with the entered one which I need to backup also.

>From what I gather from this thread I just need to take the password(-)
group(-) and shadow(-) files and insert them instead of the old ones,
nothing else needed, right?

I don't really care what the actual passwords are (I have root access,
so I can bypass them anyway), I just don't want to provide insecure
temporary passwords and pass them by email to the users.

Thanks

> Mike.
> -- 
> "In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes
>  a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell.
> 
> 
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