Possible to decode _user File?

Posted by Admin on 25-Apr-2007 11:57

Just wondering our _User file stores encoded fields. Is there a way around that to some hoe decode the encoded field to see it's value?

Because we been having problems with changing passwords in some of our apps and i was just wondering. This has no malicious intent to it.

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Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 25-Apr-2007 12:00

The built-in Progress encode function is certainly not the most secure encryption method in the world, but there is no corresponding decode function, if that is what you mean.

Posted by Admin on 25-Apr-2007 12:07

yeah thats basically what i wanted to know thanks.

Just looking for a simple way to email passwords out if forgotten or something like that.

Posted by Thomas Mercer-Hursh on 25-Apr-2007 12:36

No, you will need to take the route of resetting the password rather than telling them what it is.

Posted by gus on 25-Apr-2007 14:03

The encoded field contains a hash of the password. It is NOT the password string encrypted. With sufficient effort, one can perhaps discover a sequence of characters that will hash to the same value, but you can't "unencode" the hash to recover the original password.

-gus

Posted by Admin on 26-Apr-2007 09:28

Thanks, for that last explanation, i wasn't sure if i wold be able to do that or not. But yeah we justs rest them and sometimes reseting them screws things up or something, really i don't think our end users who reset them are doing it right that's why i had the idea to begin with.

Thanks gus

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