[Techtalk] Verify MD5-Hashed Passwords in Perl?

[Kai MacTane]

Hello. I need to get a Perl script to take in a username and password, read 
/etc/shadow (which is storing the passwords as MD5 hashes, rather than 
crypted), and verify that the user's password actually does match.

I understand that the MD5 hash has a "salt" involved; the stored hash looks 
like:

    username:$1$xxxxxxxx$yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy:[rest of line]

, and I understand that the Xs represent the salt, with the Ys giving the 
actual hashed digest.

I've looked at the MD5.pm documentation, and I can't see any way to use it 
to verify that a given string matches the stored string. But I know it must 
be possible for actual password authentication. Can anyone advise me on 
what I need? (I'm suspecting a different Perl module.)

Thanks in advance.

                                                 --Kai MacTane
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