I found the following patch for another Perl library: http://us.generation-nt.com/answer/bug-578691-libmediawiki-perl-security-upd...
I suppose one could just copy the relevant login code to ee.pl.
There's also a whole bunch of MediaWiki related Perl modules which should provide the necessary functionality, e.g. MediaWiki::API:
http://search.cpan.org/~exobuzz/MediaWiki-API-0.30/lib/MediaWiki/API.pm#Medi...
Those modules look like they would make a rewrite of the extension much easier.
hth Frank