You can add another layer of protection by saving the passwords in a way that makes them nearly useless in case somebody manages to steal your password DB. If you don't save the passwords as clear-text but i.e. as salted message digest of the clear-text password, then an attacker might steal your password file but will have problems to exploit this knowledge directly.

When the customer provides a (clear-text) password, your CGI will 'salt' it ('salt'-value from your DB), re-compute the message digest, and compare it to the value stored in your password-DB. If it matches, it is very likely, that the password is correct (simplified description). The 'salt' makes it harder for an attacker to pre-compute password lookup tables. The paranoid also checks for weak passwords.

Since you do not store the clear-text password, nobody can steal it. One consequence is that you cannot provide a password to a customer who has forgotten it - because you don't have it.

It's not perfect, but adds a little more protection for your password DB. CPAN provides a lot of suitable modules, Authen::Passphrase::MD5Crypt is only one of them. The principle is described here.

In reply to Re^5: Removing malicious HTML entities (now with more questions!) by Perlbotics
in thread Removing malicious HTML entities (now with more questions!) by Lawliet

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