docs/157049: FreeBSD Handbook: Chapter 14 (Security) Inaccuracy

[Jeffrey Walton]

>Number:         157049
>Category:       docs
>Synopsis:       FreeBSD Handbook: Chapter 14 (Security) Inaccuracy
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       non-critical
>Priority:       low
>Responsible:    freebsd-doc
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          doc-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Sun May 15 03:10:12 UTC 2011
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Jeffrey Walton
>Release:        Apple's Flavor
>Organization:
None
>Environment:
Darwin newton 10.7.0 Darwin Kernel Version 10.7.0: Sat Jan 29 15:17:16 PST 2011; root:xnu-1504.9.37~1/RELEASE_I386 i38
>Description:
>From the FreeBSD Handbook (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/crypt.html):

14.4 DES, Blowfish, MD5, and Crypt
    ...
    Unfortunately the only secure way to encrypt passwords when
    UNIX came into being was based on DES, the Data Encryption
    Standard.

I believe the above is not accurate. According to Password Security: A Case History [1], Morris and Thompson write in their PROLOGUE:

    The UNIX system was first implemented with a password file
    that contained the actual passwords of all the users....

Later, under THE FIRST SCHEME, Morris and Thompson write:

    A convenient and rather good encryption program happened to
    exist on the system at the time; it simulated the M-209 cipher
    machine used by the U.S. Army during World War II. It turned
    out that the M-209 program was usable, but with a given key,
    the ciphers produced by this program are trivial to invert. ...
    the password was used not as the text to be encrypted but as
    the key, and a constant was encrypted using this key.

I'm a big fan of history, and others might also find Morris and Thompson's history of the Unix password system interesting.

Jeffrey Walton
Baltimore, MD, US

[1] www.cs.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/passwd.ps


>How-To-Repeat:
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>Fix:
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