> > With elog it is possible to submit messages to a password protected
> > logbook without specifying the -u option.  I.e. NO PASSWORD is
> > necessary to submit a message.  I assume it is related to the problem
> > of expiring password-cookies while entering the message using a web
> > browser.
> 
> Indeed this problem is related to the expiring password cookies. As a 
> reminder: For the submission of a new entry, the password is checked when
one 
> presses the "New" button, but NOT for the "submit". This is because a 
> password can expire between the "New" and the "Submit", so a entered message 
> could not be sent. The question is now what to do with the standalone
"elog".
> 
> Right now, elog does a normal submission where the password is not checked, 
> which is maybe not what one wants. But what to do? If elog sends a special 
> flag "please do check password on submit", someone could analyze the source 
> code, remove the flag from elog and then still submit messages without a 
> password. If I put an additional flag to the web browser submission "please 
> do not check the password since the cookie might have been expired", someone 
> can add this flag into elog and still bypass the password checking.

I guess it cannot and doesn't have to be 100% save.  Maybe if the web
interface is used for a new message a long random number (let's call
it newID) can be included, which elog remembers for some time (say 1
day).  Now elogd accepts a new message only if 

  1) the cookies is there and valid or
  2) if the cookies are NOT THERE, but the newID matches one of the
       stored ones.     

The new message is rejected if the cookies are there, but are wrong.

> Anothe thing which bothers me is if you specify the password explicitly on 
> the command line of elog, it's visible in some scripts etc, which yould be a 
> security issue as well.

Maybe the encoded password should be specified.  I use wget to
retrieve some entries automatically over a cron job and with wget
you specify a cookie-file with --cookie-file (or something like
this).  The content of this file corresponds to the content of the
netscape cookie file.

> 
> Any ideas?

Can one delete or edit messages with elog?  If yes then this should not be
possible.