HP-UX Reference (11i v2 07/12) - 3 Library Functions A-M (vol 6)
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bigcrypt(3C) bigcrypt(3C)
NAME
bigcrypt - generate hashing encryption on large strings
SYNOPSIS
#include <hpsecurity.h>
#include <prot.h>
char *bigcrypt(char *key, char *salt);
DESCRIPTION
bigcrypt() acts like crypt(3C), but handles much larger strings.
bigcrypt takes the segments of
cleartext and encrypts them individually, at first using the salt passed in, and then using the first two char-
acters of the previous encrypted segment as the salt for the next segment. This avoids duplicated cipher-
text chunks when the password characters are repeated, so that the encryption of a segment involves the
encryption of all the previous segments.
Each ciphertext segment is concatenated, with the salt at the beginning, to form the entire encrypted
string.
AUTHOR
bigcrypt was developed by HP.
SEE ALSO
crypt(3C).
126 Hewlett-Packard Company − 1 − HP-UX 11i Version 2: December 2007 Update