SYNOPSIS

encode_keychange -t md5|sha1 [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION

encode_keychange produces a KeyChange string using the old and new passphrases as described in Section 5 of RFC 2274 "User-based Security Model (USM) for version 3 of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMPv3)". -t option is mandatory and specifies the hash transform type to use.

The transform is used to convert passphrase to master key for a given user (Ku), convert master key to the localized key (Kul), and to hash the old Kul with the random bits.

Passphrases are obtained by examining a number of sources until success (in order listed):

  • command line options (see -N and -O options below);

  • the file $HOME/.snmp/passphrase.ek which should only contain two lines with old and new passphrase;

  • standard input -or- user input from the terminal.

OPTIONS

-E [0x]<engineID> EngineID used for Kul generation.

<engineID> is intepreted as a hex string when preceded by 0x, otherwise it is treated as a text string. If no <engineID> is specified, it is constructed from the first IP address for the local host.

-f

Force passphrases to be read from standard input.

-h

Display the help message.

-N "<new_passphrase>"

Passphrase used to generate the new Ku.

-O "<old_passphrase>"

Passphrase used to generate the old Ku.

-P

Turn off the prompt for passphrases when getting data from standard input.

-v

Be verbose.

-V

Echo passphrases to terminal.

RELATED TO encode_keychange…

The localized key method is defined in RFC 2274, Sections 2.6 and A.2, and originally documented in

  • U. Blumenthal, N. C. Hien, B. Wijnen, "Key Derivation for Network Management Applications", IEEE Network Magazine, April/May issue, 1997.