You can access this dialog via the menu entry Key Generation from Password (PKCS #5) im Menü Individual Procedures \ Hash.
Even if the cryptographic part is secure, at the end of the day in practice user security in a password-based application depends on a secret text, the password. The password itself is generally not directly usable for such cryptosystems, but instead a key (hexadecimal) is calculated from the password. In the Key Generation dialog it is possible to generate cryptographically secure keys out of passwords. Implementation is according to the RSA standard PKCS #5.
The derived key depends on other parameters as well as the secret password: the seed, the hash function and the number of iterations used for the hash function.
The additional initialisation value, the "seed", offers the possibility of generating different keys (dependent on the seed initialisation) from one and the same password.
With the aid of hash functions a key is securely calculated from the password and the seed.
In accordance with the PKCS #5 standard on key generation, you can choose one of the following hash functions:
MD2 128 bits = 16 bytes hash function
MD5 128 bits = 16 bytes hash function
SHA1 160 bits = 20 bytes hash function
Depending on which hash function you choose, the maximum output length of the key will be either 16 or 20 bytes long (128 bit or 160 bit).
The password is then calculated by repeated use of the hash function. The number of hash iterations increases significantly the amount of effort needed for a successful attack. A minimum of one and a maximum of 10,000 hash iterations can be performed. It is recommended that 1,000 hash iterations are performed.
Seed and interation count are optional parameters in the PKCS #5 standard. To make dictionary attacks more difficult these two parameters must be used.
In the next example an eight-byte key is generated from the (weak) password DOG which, for example, can be used for encryption with DES (to do this, the generated key is simply copied to the clipboard):