the answer is lying on your hard drive:

perldoc -q password
       How do I ask the user for a password?

       (This question has nothing to do with the web.  See a different
+ FAQ for
       that.)

       There's an example of this in "crypt" in perlfunc).  First, you
+ put the
       terminal into "no echo" mode, then just read the password norma
+lly.
       You may do this with an old-style ioctl() function, POSIX termi
+nal con-
       trol (see POSIX or its documentation the Camel Book), or a call
+ to the
       stty program, with varying degrees of portability.

       You can also do this for most systems using the Term::ReadKey m
+odule
       from CPAN, which is easier to use and in theory more portable.

           use Term::ReadKey;

           ReadMode('noecho');
           $password = ReadLine(0);
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