Re: Crypt Function-- Encryption and Decryption

What would be the use of a hash if it was easy to recover ? You can use it by storing the hash of a password, en when the user supplies you his password in a script, you hash it again... and compare those two hashes... Trying to recover the value from which the hash is the result is called cracking, and no programming! Jon-EIrik Pettersen wrote:

Mulley, Nikhil wrote:

Hi All, I have a password file , which has all the passwords words encrypted with the Crypt Function I know that Crypt uses one-way algorithm to generate the encryptions and PHP has no Decrypt function , ( but can it be developed to have one ?) But I am eager to know whether it is really impossible to decrypt the passwords , if possible , how it caqn be done. like salts and all Can somebody *please* throw more light on Crypt() and Encryption and Decryption in this thread. Thanks, Nikhil

As far as I know the standard crypto-methots used in crypt() is one-way-hashing. The data used when encrypting is lost, the encrypted data is generated using this data. There is no other methods to get these data back other than brute-forcing (guess, encrypt with the same algorithm and compare) but it may take months/years depending on the size of the orginal data.