Password encryption differences between 2.x and 3.5.4?

[mano1.com]

I had written web applications outside of vBulletin which were using vb's user table to log into them.

It worked great when my vB was 2.2.5 but after updating to 3.5.4 my web app (which does an md5($password) to check against the stored password in the user table) stopped working.

My question is: how are passwords encrypted now? I need to update my external login component to check the correct passwords (right now it always returns "password incorrect").

Thanks!!