PHP & Cryptography/Hashing

[Jet]

Hi. Is it possible to create via PHP the same hash made in unix/linux for .htaccess passwords ?

I tried (there's even a hack about...) to use the crypt() function, but never managed to obtain the same hash stored in linux server file...

Generally, how could I obtain STANDARD SHA-1 byte/char sequences ?
Thanks.

[The Prohacker]

Its 6am here so I may be wrong, but try the md5() function....

[Jet]

No...
MD5 hashing is often used to one-way crypting password... but as far as I know, on unix is used standard DES (SHA-1) algo.

Btw, I can't manage to obtain any way (both with crypt(..., $salt) or md5() ) EXACTLY my 13-char encrypted password stored in .htaccess/.htpasswd file.
---> Username:xxxxxxxxxxxxx



Actually the problem is:
HOW TO CALCULATE $salt before encrypting a string... ???
As you can see, on www.php.net/crypt is said the salt is made by the first two chars of the encrypted string...
Well, it's true.
AFTER reading the .htaccess file, I can retrieve the first two chars of an hashed password, then use them as salt string.
This way, crypt("password",$salt) actually returns the correct hashed (DES SHA-1) password stored in .htaccess...

BUT HOW could I know BEFORE the salt 2-byte string ?



Thanks

[Mark Hensler]

The question is, why do you need to make a PHP function for this? Just have PHP run it in a shell...
passthru(), system(), backtick operator, etc...

[Jet]

Simply, I would understand and study the algorithm...
I though, a given password, only ONE hash was possible, as it is for md5() function...
Instead, with all crypt() algos, there is a new dimension variant: salt.
For example, in STD DES encryption, it introduces a variance of 4096 (2 bytes by 6-bit coding=base64) possibilities for each original string to hash...
And the right key is in the hashed string itself....