Importing users from another platform

[dvanwijk]

Hi,
I want to be able to import users from an osCommerce database into a vBulletin database. I have vB version 3.5.4. I have looked at the code in osCommerce and they use a 'salt' to generate md5 passwords but it is in the following format.

PHP Code:

////
// This funstion validates a plain text password with an
// encrpyted password
  function tep_validate_password($plain, $encrypted) {
    if (tep_not_null($plain) && tep_not_null($encrypted)) {
// split apart the hash / salt
      $stack = explode(':', $encrypted);

      if (sizeof($stack) != 2) return false;

      if (md5($stack[1] . $plain) == $stack[0]) {
        return true;
      }
    }

    return false;
  }

////
// This function makes a new password from a plaintext password. 
  function tep_encrypt_password($plain) {
    $password = '';

    for ($i=0; $i<10; $i++) {
      $password .= tep_rand();
    }

    $salt = substr(md5($password), 0, 2);

    $password = md5($salt . $plain) . ':' . $salt;

    return $password;
  } 


$password is the password entered by the user when they register.

My questions are;

1. I know that I cannot extract the actual password from osCommerce and import them into vB, but if a user was to login at my site when I have vB setup and after validating the password through osCommerce, how can I then insert that password suitable for vB into the vB users table?
2. How can I syncronize both systems to keep both the vBulletin and osCommerce platforms up to date as regards user registrations?

I don't expect anyone to write it for me as I know enouhg PHP to get into trouble, but maybe if I could get an outline of the process that needs to take place and maybe a guide to which file I can modify.

I would appreciate anyone's input.

Regards,
Dan