Question

I’m working on OS X Snow Leopard and need to programmatically generate an MD5crypt() password to match with passwords generated on Ubuntu 8.04 (crypt() on that platform uses MD5 if the salt starts with $1$ because it uses the crypt() found in glibc2 which has that functionality).

There is a md5crypt routine on OS X, but unfortunately, it’s Tcl-only.

A painful option would be to pull apart the code for the openssl passwd command and write my own based on that.

I’m guessing that trying to compile glibc2 and link with that on OS X would likely be nearly impossible if not impossible.

Has anyone run across the problem and solved it? Or have suggestions? (I will be filing a bug with Apple asking for it to be added)

Answer 1

To answer my question, I don’t currently see an easy way to solve this issue on OS X that doesn’t involve rolling your own implementation.

And to drive that point home further, here’s Apple’s response to my enhancement request:

There already exists another password
encryption scheme in Mac OS X, with
crypt() only provided for Unix
conformance. Given that this
overloading of crypt() with MD5
hashing is non-standard, there are no
plans to change the implementation

We are now closing this bug since our
engineers are aware of the issue and
will continue to track it offline. A
different resolution to this issue may
be considered in the future.

So if you need MD5-crypt() on OS X, you’re going to have to roll your own until it becomes a standard.