Monday, October 8, 2012

How does basic HTTP Auth work?

The server sends back a header stating it requires authentication for a given realm. The user provides the username and password, which the browser concatenates (username + ":" + password), and base64 encodes. This encoded string is then sent using a "Authorization"-header on each request from the browser. Because the credentials are only encoded, not encrypted, this is highly insecure unless it is sent over https.

http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/755/how-does-basic-http-auth-work

No comments:

Post a Comment