This method is what most login systems use. People supply user name and password, they're checked against the database, then the user name and a unique hash generated from user name and internal site key are stored as cookies. You could also theoretically store an expiration date (48 hours?) along with the user name and create a hash based off both.

The only problem with this system is that once a user is logged in, he stays logged in regardless of what the database says about user status. But this isn't a major problem if you check user status on every event (posting, voting, etc.) and combine that with login expiration and user check every x number of page views. You could also just ban his IP mask from Apache until his expiration runs out by using a .htaccess file: 

ErrorDocument 403 /youbanned.html
order allow,deny
deny from 123.456.789.
allow from all

[download]

In reply to Re: Password management. Seeking crypto advice by TedPride
in thread Password management. Seeking crypto advice by neilwatson

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.