perl and md5 module

[fxcolin]

Hello all,

I have a friend that is trying to run a perl script
and keeps getting this error message

"Your Perl installation isn't complete enough and misses the following module perl module(s):
MD5
Most webhosting server administrators install additionial Perl modules at no charge when asked."


As far as I know md5 is some kind of security incription.
Can someone shed some light ?
What is it ? and
Do we need to have the hosting company install it ?


Thanks alot

" a pat on the back... is only
18 inches away from a kick in the arse "

http://www.fxstudios.ca

 

[symbiotic]

I'm not sure, but I think the module you need is called
Digest-MD5. The latest version is 2.24 and can be obtained here

http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/G/GA/GAAS/

Thats unusual though, I think most standard perl packages have that module pre-installed. Maybe their server is really old, or they have a lazy sysadmin.

Good luck,
Symbiotic

 

[usige]

I guess you could call MD5 a security module.

Really all MD5 does is build checksums based on a known hashing algorithm. It allows you to build a signature that you can check against latter. Instead of storing a password you can store the MD5 checksum. When you want to see if a password matches just take the plaintext passwd and check it's md5 sum against the one that is stored. MD5 checksum are one way only. In other words you can't take a md5 checksum and get the original value back by using a reverse algorithm. That is why it is used in many linux distors to store passwords.

Here is a quick example:

use Digest::MD5  qw(md5_base64);

$pass_md5 = "aNXBunxFx1Xo+faMFa0D4w";

print "Please enter your password: ";
$plain = <>;
chomp $plain;
if (md5_base64($plain) eq $pass_md5) {
  print &quot;Access granted\n&quot;;
} else {
  print &quot;Invalid Password. Go away before I thump you!\n&quot;;
}

Overall I like having Digest::MD5 available. It has many too many uses not to have it around.

 

[usige]

Oh, in case you are wondering the password inth preceding example is:

This is a passwd