I-D ACTION:draft-ietf-http-authentication-01.txt

A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
This draft is a work item of the HyperText Transfer Protocol Working Group of the IETF.

	Title		: HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest 
                          Access Authentication
	Author(s)	: J. Franks, E. Sink, P. Leach, J. Hostetler, 
                          P. Hallam-Baker, L. Stewart, S. Lawrence, A. Luotonen
	Filename	: draft-ietf-http-authentication-01.txt
	Pages		: 26
	Date		: 13-Mar-98
	
''HTTP/1.0'' includes the specification for a Basic Access Authentication
scheme. This scheme is not considered to be a secure method of user
authentication (unless used in conjunction with some external secure
system such as SSL [5]), as the user name and password are passed over
the network as cleartext.
 
This document also provides the specification for HTTP's authentication
framework, the original Basic authentication scheme and a scheme based
on cryptographic hashes, referred to as ''Digest Access Authentication''.
It is therefore also intended to serve as a replacement for RFC 2069
[6].  Some optional elements specified by RFC 2069 have been removed
from this specification due to problems found since its publication;
other new elements have been added -for compatibility, those new
elements have been made optional, but are strongly recommended.
 
Like Basic, Digest access authentication verifies that both parties to a
communication know a shared secret (a password); unlike Basic, this
verification can be done without sending the password in the clear,
which is Basic's biggest weakness. As with most other authentication
protocols, the greatest sources of risks are usually found not in the
core protocol itself but in policies and procedures surrounding its use.

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