CGI question: safe passwords possible?

[Paul Rubin]

hwlgw at hotmail.com (Will Stuyvesant) writes:
> I do CGI programming with Python and I know how to make HTML forms
> with "user" and "password" fields.  But these get sent "in the clear"
> over internet, somebody told me.  I have no power over the webserver
> (it's in the hands of my service provider and they generally do not
> want to install/change/configure thing).  Is there any way to do
> Name+Password safely using just CGI and Python, so only users with a
> valid Name+Password can get access to the next CGI scripts?

The right way to do that is with SSL, which lots of web providers offer.

If you can't use SSL, there are ways you can do it with client side
Javascript (or even Java applets) assisting your CGI, but that would
make your pages JS-dependent and probably is not worth the trouble.