Re^2: gettin back crypted password

Actually, it works because the encryption is well-defined. You can't decrypt because the encryption is irreversible.

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Re^3: gettin back crypted password by inman (Curate) on Mar 08, 2005 at 09:41 UTC
To be completely pedantic, the password is not encrypted at all. It is tansformed using a one-way cryptographic hash function that has been designed to have a low (close to zero) incidence of collision for any data. Examples include MD5 and SHA-1 algorithms.(A useful background at http://www.schneier.com/essay-074.html) If the Data was encrypted then it would have been transformed into another form in such a way that it could be decrypted at a later time. As such, you can't have irreversible encryption.	[reply]

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Re^3: gettin back crypted password
by inman (Curate) on Mar 08, 2005 at 09:41 UTC

http://www.schneier.com/essay-074.html

If the Data was encrypted then it would have been transformed into another form in such a way that it could be decrypted at a later time. As such, you can't have irreversible encryption.

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