maybe a good idea is to use two usernames and two passwords.
the first username and password pair will be used to encrypt the cookie data (btw. you can't encrypt to whole cookie itself but you can encrypt the data that the gets filled with). This username, passwor pair will never be stored on the client; maybe you can put in a session object on the http-server-side as long as the user is logged in.
then u use Crypt::TripleDES to encrypt and decrypt that data used to access the telnet/ssh server. (you can build a key for encryption like this "$username$password")

but keep in mind, that this is not really secure but probably the highest security level you can get for your problem and still being easy to implement.

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.