Authentication for socket communication ...

[Mike]

Hey!

Im using a derived HTTP socket server, the base class in python.
I've got a modified version of the implementation, right now I
want to introduce authentication of users in my server. What is
the best way to implement this? The server is on the machine running
the user database. 

So how do I validate a user and a password with the system?
Are there any modules for this? How should passwords be sent?
Using clear-text isnt good enough!

Thanks!

// Mike