[vox-tech] htaccess and encrypted passwords

[Peter Jay Salzman]

For the first time tonight, I started playing around with .htaccess to
protect files in a particular directory.  The .htaccess file in question has
permissions of 644, and is:

   AuthUserFile  /etc/XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
   AuthGroupFile /dev/null
   AuthName      XXXXXXXXXX
   AuthType      Basic

   <Limit GET POST PUT>
           require user XXXXXX
   </Limit>

Also, to protect the .htaccess file itself, I placed this in
/etc/apache/httpd.conf:

   <Files .htaccess>
      order allow,deny
      deny from all
   </Files>

I've read that it's possible to make this more secure than sending a
password uuencoded over the net.  I've seen references to md5 protecting the
password, but the documents I read said that no browser supports this.
Is this true?

Any other way to make this reasonably more secure?

This is new territory for me...

Thanks,
Pete

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