Actually, the Crypt::Simple perl module does
a pretty good job at this, and it's simple to
use:
use Crypt::Simple;
use Term::ReadKey;
print "Password: ";
ReadMode('noecho');
my $pw = encrypt(ReadLine(0));
ReadMode('restore');
print "\nencrypted: $pw\n";
print "decrypted: ", decrypt($pw), "\n";
It dynamically generates the key, based on the
module name you're using. If you need other
modules to be able to decrypt this, simply pass
a pointer to the decrypt routine from the
module where you encrypted it in. Or, if you want
to specify the key, you can generate it yourself.
This is not meant to thwart serious crackers.
It is simply one step up from allowing a password
from being printed in plaintext when you do
a structure dumps during debugging other problems.
Having hardcopy printouts of plaintext passwords
is a bad thing.
[MSCHWERN - Mon Sep 19 02:06:44 2005]:
Show quoted text> [guest - Mon Aug 15 16:47:57 2005]:
> > I would recommend that the Net::SSH::Perl module
> > store the password as encrypted text in its internal
> > data structure.
>
> You can't, not usefully. Encryption requires a key to encrypt and
> decrypt. Net::SSH::Perl must know that key. It has to store it
> somewhere in plaintext so someone can read the key and decrypt your
> password (and they can read the Net::SSH::Perl source code to figure
> out
> how its encrypted).
>
> You can encrypt the key, but then you need a key for that...
