HP-UX Reference (11i v1 05/09) - 1 User Commands A-M (vol 1)

makekey(1) makekey(1)

NAME

makekey - generate encryption key

SYNOPSIS

/usr/lbin/makekey

DESCRIPTION

makekey improves the usefulness of encryption schemes depending on a key by increasing the amount of

time required to search the key space. It reads 10 bytes from its standard input and writes 13 bytes on its

standard output. The output depends on the input in a way intended to be difﬁcult to compute (i.e., to

require a substantial fraction of a second).

The ﬁrst eight input bytes (the input key) can be arbitrary

ASCII characters. The last two (the salt) are best

chosen from the set of digits,

/, and uppercase and lowercase letters. The salt characters are repeated

as the ﬁrst two characters of the output. The remaining 11 output characters are chosen from the same set

as the salt and constitute the output key.

The transformation performed is essentially the following: the salt is used to select one of 4,096 crypto-

graphic machines all based on the National Bureau of Standards

DES algorithm, but broken in 4,096

different ways. Using the input key as key, a constant string is fed into the machine and recirculated a

number of times. The 64 bits that come out are distributed into the 66 output key bits in the result.

makekey is intended for programs that perform encryption (e.g., ed(1) and crypt(1)). Usually, its input

and output will be pipes.