Till - great recommendation, I'll expand on it.

Depending on the back end app server, there is usually a mechanism in
place for creating a trust between the web server and appserver and then
encrypting that connection with SSL. When credentials are entered the
entire pipe is encrypted from the client > webserver > app server based
upon that trust relationship and SSL- encrypted connection

Websphere has this option available as does Tomcat. I suspect that
Coldfusion and other app servers have something similar.

Good luck.

Don

Till Elsner wrote:
> What about securing (i.e. encrypting) the connection between web
> server and app server itself, like connecting to the app server from
> the web server via a SSH-forwarded local port? You could keep the
> original authentication method and have the entire communication
> encrypted anyway.
>
> Greetings
> Till
>
> Am 07.09.2009 um 08:04 schrieb Chintan Oza:
>
>> Dear All,
>>
>> We have a web application which perform user authentication on
>> id+password basis.
>>
>> The architecture is like this.
>> Browser<-HTTPS->WebServer<-->AppServer
>>
>> We have a requirement where password should not be available to the
>> WebServer (even in hashed format).
>>
>> Only solution that I can think of is having an Applet performing PKI
>> encryption on the password before submitting the form.
>>
>> Please suggest if there are any better alternatives.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Chintan
>>
>>
>
>
>

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