SS> Before I run down the rabbit hole of hacking together at least a 
 SS> DIGEST-MD5 -- something that protects user passwords from going in the 
 SS> clear;  I wanted to see if anyone else has started or in the midst of 
 SS> working on the same?

 BP> from clamav:

 BP> echo "password" | sigtool --md5 >user.md5

 BP> put that in the password field, and send this in netmail, problem
 BP> solved 

the OP is talking about the password submitted during the nntp authentication
process... not the one that is sent to the admin from the user for signup...

what you describe would simple be using the md5 of the password as the
password... not the same thing... something has to encode and decode the md5...
that something would be the user's nntp client and the nntp server...

)\/(ark