Hi all. Suppose my CGI scripts run as user 'nobody'. If someone logs in and I serve some data from a database, I don't want someone seeing the database password. In theory they don't, but if somebody accidentally gets my source code, there it is! 
my $dbh = DBI->connect( 'dbi:ODBC:sometable','someuser', 'somepass', {
+RaiseError=>1}) or die DBI->errstr;

[download]
How can I protect that? My thought is to move the password into a file and out of any directories that the Web server serves files from and set the owner of that file as 'nobody' with read/write permissions. Of course, I would use crypt or a digest to further protect that password.

Is it the best method of protecting passwords? Will it work on Windows? I do not know much about operating systems, so type slow :)

jatzger

In reply to CGI and Password security by Anonymous Monk

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