Default password hash

[Mark Felder]

On Fri, 08 Jun 2012 07:51:55 -0500, Dag-Erling Smørgrav <des at des.no> wrote:

> We still have MD5 as our default password hash, even though known-hash
> attacks against MD5 are relatively easy these days.  We've supported
> SHA256 and SHA512 for many years now, so how about making SHA512 the
> default instead of MD5, like on most Linux distributions?
>
> Index: etc/login.conf
> ===================================================================
> --- etc/login.conf      (revision 236616)
> +++ etc/login.conf      (working copy)
> @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@
>  # AND SEMANTICS'' section of getcap(3) for more escape sequences).
>
>  default:\
> -       :passwd_format=md5:\
> +       :passwd_format=sha512:\
>         :copyright=/etc/COPYRIGHT:\
>         :welcome=/etc/motd:\
>         :setenv=MAIL=/var/mail/$,BLOCKSIZE=K,FTP_PASSIVE_MODE=YES:\
>
> DES


I strongly support this -- using either SHA-2 or Blowfish would be a great  
step forward. You'll also want to change the defuault for auth.conf so  
adduser picks it up.


#
# $FreeBSD: releng/9.0/etc/auth.conf 118103 2003-07-28 02:28:51Z rwatson $
#
# Configure some authentication-related defaults.  This file is being
# gradually subsumed by user class and PAM configuration.
#

# crypt_default =       md5 des