lib/libcrypt/crypt.3

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.\"     @(#)crypt.3	8.2 (Berkeley) 12/11/93
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.Dd October 20, 2021
.Dt CRYPT 3
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm crypt ,
.Nm setkey ,
.Nm encrypt ,
.Nm des_setkey ,
.Nm des_cipher
.Nd password hashing
.Sh LIBRARY
.Lb libcrypt
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.In unistd.h
.Ft "char *"
.Fn crypt "const char *key" "const char *setting"
.Ft int
.Fn encrypt "char *block" "int flag"
.Ft int
.Fn des_setkey "const char *key"
.Ft int
.Fn des_cipher "const char *in" "char *out" "long salt" "int count"
.In stdlib.h
.Ft int
.Fn setkey "const char *key"
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Fn crypt
function
performs password hashing.
The password hashing scheme used by
.Fn crypt
is dependent upon the contents of the
.Tn NUL Ns -terminated
string
.Ar setting .
If it begins
with a string character
.Pq Ql $
and a number then a different algorithm is used depending on the number.
At the moment a
.Ql $1
chooses MD5 hashing and a
.Ql $2
chooses Blowfish hashing; see below for more information.
If
.Ar setting
begins with the
.Ql _
character,
.Tn DES
password hashing with a user specified number of
perturbations is selected.
If
.Ar setting
begins with any other character,
.Tn DES
password hashing with a fixed
number of perturbations is selected.
.Ss DES password hashing
The
.Tn DES
password hashing scheme is derived from the
.Tn NBS
Data Encryption Standard.
Additional code has been added to deter key search attempts and to use
stronger hashing algorithms.
In the
.Tn DES
case, the second argument to
.Fn crypt
is a character array, 9 bytes in length, consisting of an underscore
.Pq Ql _
followed by 4 bytes of iteration count and 4 bytes of salt.
Both the iteration
.Fa count
and the
.Fa salt
are encoded with 6 bits per character, least significant bits first.
The values 0 to 63 are encoded by the characters
.Ql ./0-9A-Za-z ,
respectively.
.Pp
The
.Fa salt
is used to induce disorder in to the
.Tn DES
algorithm
in one of 16777216
possible ways
(specifically, if bit
.Em i
of the
.Ar salt
is set then bits
.Em i
and
.Em i+24
are swapped in the
.Tn DES
.Dq E
box output).
The
.Ar key
is divided into groups of 8 characters (a short final group is null-padded)
and the low-order 7 bits of each character (56 bits per group) are
used to form the
.Tn DES
key as follows: the first group of 56 bits becomes the initial
.Tn DES
key.
For each additional group, the XOR of the group bits and the encryption of the
.Tn DES
key with itself becomes the next
.Tn DES
key.
Then the final
.Tn DES
key is used to perform
.Ar count
cumulative encryptions of a 64-bit constant yielding a
.Sq ciphertext .
The value returned is a
.Tn NUL Ns -terminated
string, 20 bytes in length, consisting
of the
.Ar setting
followed by the encoded 64-bit
.Sq ciphertext .
.Pp
For compatibility with historical versions of
.Fn crypt ,
the
.Ar setting
may consist of 2 bytes of salt, encoded as above, in which case an
iteration
.Ar count
of 25 is used, fewer perturbations of
.Tn DES
are available, at most 8
characters of
.Ar key
are used, and the returned value is a
.Tn NUL Ns -terminated
string 13 bytes in length.
.Pp
The
functions
.Fn encrypt ,
.Fn setkey ,
.Fn des_setkey
and
.Fn des_cipher
allow limited access to the
.Tn DES
algorithm itself.
The
.Ar key
argument to
.Fn setkey
is a 64 character array of
binary values (numeric 0 or\~1).
A 56-bit key is derived from this array by dividing the array
into groups of 8 and ignoring the last bit in each group.
.Pp
The
.Fn encrypt
argument
.Fa block
is also a 64 character array of
binary values.
If the value of
.Fa flag
is 0,
the argument
.Fa block
is encrypted, otherwise it
is decrypted.
The encryption or decryption is returned in the original
array
.Fa block
after using the
key specified
by
.Fn setkey
to process it.
.Pp
The
.Fn des_setkey
and
.Fn des_cipher
functions are faster but less portable than
.Fn setkey
and
.Fn encrypt .
The argument to
.Fn des_setkey
is a character array of length 8.
The
.Em least
significant bit in each character is ignored and the next 7 bits of each
character are concatenated to yield a 56-bit key.
The function
.Fn des_cipher
encrypts (or decrypts if
.Fa count
is negative) the 64-bits stored in the 8 characters at
.Fa in
using
.Xr abs 3
of
.Fa count
iterations of
.Tn DES
and stores the 64-bit result in the 8 characters at
.Fa out .
The
.Fa salt
specifies perturbations to
.Tn DES
as described above.
.Ss MD5 password hashing
For the
.Tn MD5
password hashing scheme, the version number (in this case
.Ql 1 ) ,
.Fa salt
and the hashed password are separated
by the
.Ql $
character.
An encoded password hash looks like:
.Pp
.Dl "$1$2qGr5PPQ$eT08WBFev3RPLNChixg0H"
.Pp
The entire encoded MD5 password hash is passed as
.Fa setting
for interpretation.
.Ss Argon2 password hashing
Argon2 is a memory-hard password hashing algorithm.
.Fn crypt
provides all three variants: argon2i, argon2d, and argon2id.
It is recommended to use argon2id, which provides a hybrid combination
using argon2i on the first pass, and argon2d on the remaining
passes.
We parameterize on three variables.
First,
.Va m_cost ( Li m ) ,
specifies the memory usage in
.Tn KB .
Second,
.Va t_cost ( Li t ) ,
specifies the number of iterations.
Third,
.Va parallelism ( Li p )
specifies the number of threads.
This is currently ignored and one thread will always be used.
An encoded Argon2 password hash looks like:
.Bd -literal -offset indent
$argon2id$v=19$m=4096,t=6,p=1$qCatF9a1s/6TgcYB$ \e
   yeYYrU/rh7E+LI2CAeHTSHVB3iO+OXiNIUHu6NPeTfo
.Ed
.Pp
containing five fields delimited by
.Ql $ .
The fields, in order, are variant name, version, parameter set,
128-bit salt, and Argon2 hash encoded in base64.
The entire encoded Argon2 password hash is required to be processed
correctly.
.Ss "Blowfish" bcrypt
The
.Tn Blowfish
version of
.Fn crypt
has 128 bits of
.Fa salt
in order to make building dictionaries of common passwords space consuming.
The initial state of the
.Tn Blowfish
cipher is expanded using the
.Fa salt
and the
.Fa password
repeating the process a variable number of rounds, which is encoded in
the password hash.
The maximum password length is 72.
The final Blowfish password output is created by encrypting the string
.Pp
.Dl OrpheanBeholderScryDoubt
.Pp
with the
.Tn Blowfish
state 64 times.
.Pp
The version number, the logarithm of the number of rounds and
the concatenation of salt and hashed password are separated by the
.Ql $
character.
An encoded
.Sq 8
would specify 256 rounds.
An encoded Blowfish password hash looks like:
.Pp
.Dl "$2a$12$eIAq8PR8sIUnJ1HaohxX2O9x9Qlm2vK97LJ5dsXdmB.eXF42qjchC"
.Pp
The entire encoded Blowfish password hash is passed as
.Fa setting
for interpretation.
.Sh RETURN VALUES
The function
.Fn crypt
returns a pointer to the encoded hash on success.
.Pp
The behavior of
.Fn crypt
on errors isn't well standardized.
Some implementations simply can't fail (unless the process dies, in which
case they obviously can't return), others return
.Dv NULL
or a fixed string.
Most implementations don't set
.Va errno ,
but some do.
.St -susv2
specifies
only returning
.Dv NULL
and setting
.Va errno
as a valid behavior, and defines
only one possible error
.Er ( ENOSYS ,
.Dq "The functionality is not supported on this implementation." )
Unfortunately, most existing applications aren't prepared to handle
.Dv NULL
returns from
.Fn crypt .
The description below corresponds to this implementation of
.Fn crypt
only.
The behavior may change to match standards, other implementations or existing
applications.
.Pp
.Fn crypt
may only fail (and return) when passed an invalid or unsupported
.Fa setting ,
in which case it returns a pointer to a magic string that is shorter than 13
characters and is guaranteed to differ from
.Fa setting .
This behavior is safe for older applications which assume that
.Fn crypt
can't fail, when both setting new passwords and authenticating against
existing password hashes.
.Pp
The functions
.Fn setkey ,
.Fn encrypt ,
.Fn des_setkey ,
and
.Fn des_cipher
return 0 on success and 1 on failure.
Historically, the functions
.Fn setkey
and
.Fn encrypt
did not return any value.
They have been provided return values primarily to distinguish
implementations where hardware support is provided but not
available or where the
.Tn DES
encryption is not available due to the
usual political silliness.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr login 1 ,
.Xr passwd 1 ,
.Xr pwhash 1 ,
.Xr getpass 3 ,
.Xr md5 3 ,
.Xr passwd 5 ,
.Xr passwd.conf 5
.Rs
.%T "Argon2: the memory-hard function for password hashing and other applications"
.%A Alex Biryukov
.%A Daniel Dinu
.%A Dmitry Khovratovich
.%D 2017
.%I University of Luxembourg
.%U https://www.password-hashing.net/
.Re
.Rs
.%T "Mathematical Cryptology for Computer Scientists and Mathematicians"
.%A Wayne Patterson
.%D 1987
.%N ISBN 0-8476-7438-X
.Re
.Rs
.%T "Password Security: A Case History"
.%A R. Morris
.%A Ken Thompson
.%J "Communications of the ACM"
.%V vol. 22
.%P pp. 594-597
.%D Nov. 1979
.Re
.Rs
.%T "DES will be Totally Insecure within Ten Years"
.%A M.E. Hellman
.%J "IEEE Spectrum"
.%V vol. 16
.%P pp. 32-39
.%D July 1979
.Re
.Sh HISTORY
A rotor-based
.Fn crypt
function appeared in
.At v6 .
The current style
.Fn crypt
first appeared in
.At v7 .
.Sh BUGS
Dropping the
.Em least
significant bit in each character of the argument to
.Fn des_setkey
is ridiculous.
.Pp
The
.Fn crypt
function leaves its result in an internal static object and returns
a pointer to that object.
Subsequent calls to
.Fn crypt
will modify the same object.
.Pp
Before
.Nx 6.0
.Fn crypt
returned either
.Dv NULL
or
.Li \*q:\*q
on error.
.Pp
The term
.Sq encryption
for password hashing does not match the terminology of modern
cryptography, but the name of the library is entrenched.
.Pp
A library for password hashing has no business directly exposing the
.Tn DES
cipher itself, which is obsolete and broken as a cipher.