<<< Date Index >>>     <<< Thread Index >>>

minor apache htpasswd problem



This is valid for the htpasswd utility of at least apache 1.3.27 and 1.3.28:

The salt used for password generation solely depends on the current system time:

(void) srand((int) time((time_t *) NULL));
ap_to64(&salt[0], rand(), 8);

This causes all passwords generated within the same second to have the same salt value. This in turn may cause auto-generated default passwords to have the same value which could be a point of attack if the password file is not properly protected.

The apache team was notified on 23.08.2003 but didn't respond.

Though it would need quite some administrative errors before the above could be used it should still be corrected.
--
Andreas Steinmetz