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manual: Revise crypt.texi.
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This is a major rewrite of the description of 'crypt', 'getentropy',
and 'getrandom'.

A few highlights of the content changes:

 - Throughout the manual, public headers, and user-visible messages,
   I replaced the term "password" with "passphrase", the term
   "password database" with "user database", and the term
   "encrypt(ion)" with "(one-way) hashing" whenever it was applied to
   passphrases.  I didn't bother making this change in internal code
   or tests.  The use of the term "password" in ruserpass.c survives,
   because that refers to a keyword in netrc files, but it is adjusted
   to make this clearer.

   There is a note in crypt.texi explaining that they were
   traditionally called passwords but single words are not good enough
   anymore, and a note in users.texi explaining that actual passphrase
   hashes are found in a "shadow" database nowadays.

 - There is a new short introduction to the "Cryptographic Functions"
   section, explaining how we do not intend to be a general-purpose
   cryptography library, and cautioning that there _are_, or have
   been, legal restrictions on the use of cryptography in many
   countries, without getting into any kind of detail that we can't
   promise to keep up to date.

 - I added more detail about what a "one-way function" is, and why
   they are used to obscure passphrases for storage.  I removed the
   paragraph saying that systems not connected to a network need no
   user authentication, because that's a pretty rare situation
   nowadays.  (It still says "sometimes it is necessary" to
   authenticate the user, though.)

 - I added documentation for all of the hash functions that glibc
   actually supports, but not for the additional hash functions
   supported by libxcrypt.  If we're going to keep this manual section
   around after the transition is more advanced, it would probably
   make sense to add them then.

 - There is much more detailed discussion of how to generate a salt,
   and the failure behavior for crypt is documented.  (Returning an
   invalid hash on failure is what libxcrypt does; Solar Designer's
   notes say that this was done "for compatibility with old programs
   that assume crypt can never fail".)

 - As far as I can tell, the header 'crypt.h' is entirely a GNU
   invention, and never existed on any other Unix lineage.  The
   function 'crypt', however, was in Issue 1 of the SVID and is now
   in the XSI component of POSIX.  I tried to make all of the
   @standards annotations consistent with this, but I'm not sure I got
   them perfectly right.

 - The genpass.c example has been improved to use getentropy instead
   of the current time to generate the salt, and to use a SHA-256 hash
   instead of MD5. It uses more random bytes than is strictly
   necessary because I didn't want to complicate the code with proper
   base64 encoding.

 - The testpass.c example has three hardwired hashes now, to
   demonstrate that different one-way functions produce different
   hashes for the same input.  It also demonstrates how DES hashing
   only pays attention to the first eight characters of the input.

 - There is new text explaining in more detail how a CSPRNG differs
   from a regular random number generator, and how
   getentropy/getrandom are not exactly a CSPRNG.  I tried not to make
   specific falsifiable claims here.  I also tried to make the
   blocking/cancellation/error behavior of both getentropy and
   getrandom clearer.
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zackw authored and fweimer-rh committed Jun 29, 2018
1 parent 6ab902e commit 841785b
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26 changes: 26 additions & 0 deletions ChangeLog
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -1,3 +1,29 @@
2018-06-29 Zack Weinberg <[email protected]>

* crypt/crypt.h, posix/unistd.h: Update comments and
prototypes for crypt and crypt_r.

* manual/crypt.texi (Cryptographic Functions): New initial
exposition.
(crypt): Section renamed to 'Passphrase Storage'. Full rewrite.
(Unpredictable Bytes): Improve initial exposition. Clarify error
behavior of getentropy and getrandom.
* manual/examples/genpass.c: Generate a salt using getentropy
instead of the current time. Use hash $5$ (SHA-2-256).
* manual/examples/testpass.c: Demonstrate validation against
hashes generated with three different one-way functions.

* manual/intro.texi: crypt.texi does not need an overview
anymore.

* manual/nss.texi, manual/memory.texi, manual/socket.texi
* manual/terminal.texi: Consistently refer to "passphrases"
* instead of "passwords", and to the "user database" instead
* of the "password database".
* manual/users.texi: Similarly. Add notes about how actual
passphrase hashes are now stored in the shadow database.
Remove 20-year-old junk todo note.

2018-06-29 Zack Weinberg <[email protected]>

* manual/crypt.texi: Use a normal top-level @node declaration.
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21 changes: 16 additions & 5 deletions crypt/crypt.h
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -28,13 +28,18 @@

__BEGIN_DECLS

/* Encrypt at most 8 characters from KEY using salt to perturb DES. */
extern char *crypt (const char *__key, const char *__salt)
/* One-way hash PHRASE, returning a string suitable for storage in the
user database. SALT selects the one-way function to use, and
ensures that no two users' hashes are the same, even if they use
the same passphrase. The return value points to static storage
which will be overwritten by the next call to crypt. */
extern char *crypt (const char *__phrase, const char *__salt)
__THROW __nonnull ((1, 2));

#ifdef __USE_GNU
/* Reentrant version of 'crypt'. The additional argument
points to a structure where the results are placed in. */

/* This structure provides scratch and output buffers for 'crypt_r'.
Its contents should not be accessed directly. */
struct crypt_data
{
char keysched[16 * 8];
Expand All @@ -49,7 +54,13 @@ struct crypt_data
int direction, initialized;
};

extern char *crypt_r (const char *__key, const char *__salt,
/* Thread-safe version of 'crypt'.
DATA must point to a 'struct crypt_data' allocated by the caller.
Before the first call to 'crypt_r' with a new 'struct crypt_data',
that object must be initialized to all zeroes. The pointer
returned, if not NULL, will point within DATA. (It will still be
overwritten by the next call to 'crypt_r' with the same DATA.) */
extern char *crypt_r (const char *__phrase, const char *__salt,
struct crypt_data * __restrict __data)
__THROW __nonnull ((1, 2, 3));
#endif
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2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion inet/ruserpass.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -177,7 +177,7 @@ ruserpass (const char *host, const char **aname, const char **apass)
fstat64(fileno(cfile), &stb) >= 0 &&
(stb.st_mode & 077) != 0) {
warnx(_("Error: .netrc file is readable by others."));
warnx(_("Remove password or make file unreadable by others."));
warnx(_("Remove 'password' line or make file unreadable by others."));
goto bad;
}
if (token() && *apass == 0) {
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2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion manual/contrib.texi
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Expand Up @@ -129,7 +129,7 @@ Martin Galvan for contributing gdb pretty printer support to glibc and adding
an initial set of pretty printers for structures in the POSIX Threads library.

@item
Michael Glad for the DES encryption function @code{crypt} and related
Michael Glad for the passphrase-hashing function @code{crypt} and related
functions.

@item
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