How Can I Securely Read Passwords Using std::cin Without Echoing to the Console?

Secure Password Input with std::cin

When acquiring sensitive user information, such as passwords, it's crucial to prevent the characters typed from being echoed on the screen for privacy concerns. To accomplish this with std::cin, platform-specific mechanisms are employed.

Windows Solution:

Windows utilizes the SetConsoleMode function to toggle echo behavior. The code snippet below sets the echo disabled by clearing the ENABLE_ECHO_INPUT flag:

#ifdef WIN32
#include <windows.h>

...

HANDLE hStdin = GetStdHandle(STD_INPUT_HANDLE);
DWORD mode;
GetConsoleMode(hStdin, &mode);
mode &= ~ENABLE_ECHO_INPUT;
SetConsoleMode(hStdin, mode);
#endif

Unix (Linux/macOS) Solution:

Unix-based systems rely on the termios library and its tcsetattr function. Here's the code to turn off echo:

#else
#include <termios.h>

...

struct termios tty;
tcgetattr(STDIN_FILENO, &tty);
tty.c_lflag &= ~ECHO;
tcsetattr(STDIN_FILENO, TCSANOW, &tty);
#endif

Sample Usage:

With the echo-disabling function in place, here's how to use std::cin to securely read a password:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

...

SetStdinEcho(false);
std::string password;
std::cin >> password;
SetStdinEcho(true);

By employing these platform-specific methods, you can ensure that user passwords are not echoed on the screen, maintaining both privacy and security in your application.

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