...

The second way is to use a passphrase that is at least 8 characters long. The mi2b2 client will first generate a salt using the user's username that is used to log onto i2b2. The salt is randomly generated using the SHA1PRNG (SHA1 Pseudo Random Number Generator) algorithm. The random number generator is seeded with the user's username. (This is the reason why two users using the same passphrase will generate two different keys.) If no such algorithm exists on the particular platform, the platform default will be used instead. The salt is 16 bytes long. Then the following process is repeated:

...