General Password questions

[Riccardo Attilio Galli]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2003 19:32:50 -0400, Peter Hansen wrote:

> Todd Johnson wrote:
>> 
>> On a similar note, I want to save the password to a
>> file. How do I encrypt the password?
> 
> You don't encrypt passwords, you hash them.  That means use a
> cryptographically strong hashing algorithm such as SHA or MD5
> and store the resulting value.  Later, when a user has entered 
> a password which you want to check against the correct one, you 
> run the same hash algorithm on the password-under-test and compare 
> the result with the stored result. 
> [...]
> -Peter

Hi Peter,
what about if I would reload an entered password?
I wrote an e-mail client, and I haven't found a way to store the password
that an user enter the first time and use it when the program is restarted.
I don't want to ask to the user every time the account password, but also
I don't want to store it as plain text.
Do you know what is the usual practice in these cases?

Thanks,
Riccardo

-- 
-=Riccardo Galli=-

 _,e.
s~  ``
 ~@.   ideralis Programs
.   ol 
 `**~  http://www.sideralis.net