One document matched: draft-ietf-httpauth-basicauth-update-00.txt
HTTPAuth Working Group J. Reschke
Internet-Draft greenbytes
Updates: 2617 (if approved) September 13, 2013
Intended status: Standards Track
Expires: March 17, 2014
The 'Basic' HTTP Authentication Scheme
draft-ietf-httpauth-basicauth-update-00
Abstract
This document defines the "Basic" Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
Authentication Scheme.
Editorial Note (To be removed by RFC Editor before publication)
Discussion of this draft takes place on the HTTPAuth working group
mailing list (http-auth@ietf.org), which is archived at <http://
www.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/http-auth/current/maillist.html>.
XML versions, latest edits and the issues list for this document are
available from <http://greenbytes.de/tech/
webdav/#draft-ietf-httpauth-basicauth-update>.
The changes in this draft are summarized in Appendix A.1.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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This Internet-Draft will expire on March 17, 2014.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2013 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Notational Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. The 'Basic' Authentication Scheme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
5. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
6. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
7. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Appendix A. Change Log (to be removed by RFC Editor before
publication) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
A.1. Since RFC 2617 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Appendix B. Open issues (to be removed by RFC Editor prior to
publication) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
B.1. edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
B.2. upd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
B.3. enc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
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1. Introduction
This document defines the "Basic" Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
Authentication Scheme ([draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth]). This scheme is
not considered to be a secure method of user authentication unless
used in conjunction with some external secure system such as TLS
(Transport Layer Security, [RFC5246]), as the user name and password
are passed over the network as cleartext.
The "Basic" scheme previously was defined in Section 2 of [RFC2617].
This document updates the definition, and also addresses
internationalization issues.
Other documents updating RFC 2617 are "Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP/1.1): Authentication" ([draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth], defining
the authentication framework) and "HTTP Digest Update"
([draft-ietf-httpauth-digest-update], updating the definition of the
'"Digest" authentication scheme).
2. Notational Conventions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in [RFC2119].
3. The 'Basic' Authentication Scheme
The "basic" authentication scheme is based on the model that the
client must authenticate itself with a user-ID and a password for
each realm. The realm value should be considered an opaque string
which can only be compared for equality with other realms on that
server. The server will service the request only if it can validate
the user-ID and password for the protection space of the Request-URI.
There are no optional authentication parameters.
For Basic, the framework above is utilized as follows:
challenge = "Basic" realm
credentials = "Basic" basic-credentials
Upon receipt of an unauthorized request for a URI within the
protection space, the origin server MAY respond with a challenge like
the following:
WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="WallyWorld"
where "WallyWorld" is the string assigned by the server to identify
the protection space of the Request-URI. A proxy may respond with
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the same challenge using the Proxy-Authenticate header field.
To receive authorization, the client sends the userid and password,
separated by a single colon (":") character, within a base64
[RFC2396] encoded string in the credentials.
basic-credentials = base64-user-pass
base64-user-pass = <base64 [RFC2045] encoding of user-pass,
except not limited to 76 char/line>
user-pass = userid ":" password
userid = *<TEXT excluding ":">
password = *TEXT
Userids might be case sensitive.
If the user agent wishes to send the userid "Aladdin" and password
"open sesame", it would use the following header field:
Authorization: Basic QWxhZGRpbjpvcGVuIHNlc2FtZQ==
A client SHOULD assume that all paths at or deeper than the depth of
the last symbolic element in the path field of the Request-URI also
are within the protection space specified by the Basic realm value of
the current challenge. A client MAY preemptively send the
corresponding Authorization header with requests for resources in
that space without receipt of another challenge from the server.
Similarly, when a client sends a request to a proxy, it may reuse a
userid and password in the Proxy-Authorization header field without
receiving another challenge from the proxy server. See Section 4 for
security considerations associated with Basic authentication.
4. Security Considerations
The Basic authentication scheme is not a secure method of user
authentication, nor does it in any way protect the entity, which is
transmitted in cleartext across the physical network used as the
carrier. HTTP does not prevent the addition of enhancements (such as
schemes to use one-time passwords) to Basic authentication.
The most serious flaw in Basic authentication is that it results in
the essentially cleartext transmission of the user's password over
the physical network. Many other authentication schemes address this
problem.
Because Basic authentication involves the cleartext transmission of
passwords it SHOULD NOT be used (without enhancements) to protect
sensitive or valuable information.
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A common use of Basic authentication is for identification purposes
-- requiring the user to provide a user name and password as a means
of identification, for example, for purposes of gathering accurate
usage statistics on a server. When used in this way it is tempting
to think that there is no danger in its use if illicit access to the
protected documents is not a major concern. This is only correct if
the server issues both user name and password to the users and in
particular does not allow the user to choose his or her own password.
The danger arises because naive users frequently reuse a single
password to avoid the task of maintaining multiple passwords.
If a server permits users to select their own passwords, then the
threat is not only unauthorized access to documents on the server but
also unauthorized access to any other resources on other systems that
the user protects with the same password. Furthermore, in the
server's password database, many of the passwords may also be users'
passwords for other sites. The owner or administrator of such a
system could therefore expose all users of the system to the risk of
unauthorized access to all those sites if this information is not
maintained in a secure fashion.
Basic Authentication is also vulnerable to spoofing by counterfeit
servers. If a user can be led to believe that he is connecting to a
host containing information protected by Basic authentication when,
in fact, he is connecting to a hostile server or gateway, then the
attacker can request a password, store it for later use, and feign an
error. This type of attack is not possible with Digest
Authentication. Server implementers SHOULD guard against the
possibility of this sort of counterfeiting by gateways or CGI
scripts. In particular it is very dangerous for a server to simply
turn over a connection to a gateway. That gateway can then use the
persistent connection mechanism to engage in multiple transactions
with the client while impersonating the original server in a way that
is not detectable by the client.
5. IANA Considerations
IANA maintains the registry of HTTP Authentication Schemes
([draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth]) at
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/http-authschemes>.
The entry for the "Basic" Authentication Scheme shall be updated with
a pointer to this specification.
6. Acknowledgements
This specification takes over the definition of the "Basic" HTTP
Authentication Scheme, previously defined in RFC 2617. We thank John
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Franks, Phillip M. Hallam-Baker, Jeffery L. Hostetler, Scott D.
Lawrence, Paul J. Leach, Ari Luotonen, and Lawrence C. Stewart for
their work on that specification, from which significant amounts of
text was borrowed. See Section 6 of [RFC2617] for further
acknowledgements.
7. References
7.1. Normative References
[RFC2045] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein,
"Multipurpose Internet Mail
Extensions (MIME) Part One:
Format of Internet Message
Bodies", RFC 2045,
November 1996.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use
in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
March 1997.
[RFC2396] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R.,
and L. Masinter, "Uniform
Resource Identifiers (URI):
Generic Syntax", RFC 2396,
August 1998.
[draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth] Fielding, R., Ed. and J.
Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext
Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1):
Authentication",
draft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth-23
(work in progress), July 2013.
7.2. Informative References
[RFC2617] Franks, J., Hallam-Baker, P.,
Hostetler, J., Lawrence, S.,
Leach, P., Luotonen, A., and L.
Stewart, "HTTP Authentication:
Basic and Digest Access
Authentication", RFC 2617,
June 1999.
[RFC5246] Dierks, T. and E. Rescorla, "The
Transport Layer Security (TLS)
Protocol Version 1.2", RFC 5246,
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August 2008.
[draft-ietf-httpauth-digest-update] Shekh-Yusef, R. and D. Ahrens,
"HTTP Digest Update", draft-
ietf-httpauth-digest-update-05
(work in progress),
September 2013.
Appendix A. Change Log (to be removed by RFC Editor before publication)
A.1. Since RFC 2617
This draft acts as a baseline for tracking subsequent changes to the
specification. As such, it extracts the definition of "Basic", plus
the related Security Considerations, and also adds the IANA
registration of the scheme. Changes to the actual definition will be
made in subsequent drafts.
Appendix B. Open issues (to be removed by RFC Editor prior to
publication)
B.1. edit
Type: edit
julian.reschke@greenbytes.de (2013-09-11): Umbrella issue for
editorial fixes/enhancements.
B.2. upd
In Section 3:
Type: change
julian.reschke@greenbytes.de (2013-09-12): Update the definition to
reflect underlying changes (RFC2616->httpbis, RFC2396->2616, other
references).
B.3. enc
In Section 3:
Type: change
julian.reschke@greenbytes.de (2013-09-12): Fix the encoding issue, by
pulling in draft-ietf-httpauth-basicauth-enc.
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Index
B
base64-user-pass 4
basic-credentials 4
C
challenge 3
credentials 3
P
password 4
U
user-pass 4
userid 4
Author's Address
Julian F. Reschke
greenbytes GmbH
Hafenweg 16
Muenster, NW 48155
Germany
EMail: julian.reschke@greenbytes.de
URI: http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/
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