makekey(1)						      General Commands Manual							makekey(1)

NAME

       makekey - generate encryption key

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

       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 cryptographic 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.

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

SEE ALSO

       crypt(1), ed(1), passwd(4).

																	makekey(1)