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+
+Network Working Group J. Franks
+Request for Comments: 2617 Northwestern University
+Obsoletes: 2069 P. Hallam-Baker
+Category: Standards Track Verisign, Inc.
+ J. Hostetler
+ AbiSource, Inc.
+ S. Lawrence
+ Agranat Systems, Inc.
+ P. Leach
+ Microsoft Corporation
+ A. Luotonen
+ Netscape Communications Corporation
+ L. Stewart
+ Open Market, Inc.
+ June 1999
+
+
+ HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication
+
+Status of this Memo
+
+ This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
+ Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
+ improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
+ Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
+ and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
+
+Copyright Notice
+
+ Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999). All Rights Reserved.
+
+Abstract
+
+ "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.
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 1]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ 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.
+
+Table of Contents
+
+ 1 Access Authentication................................ 3
+ 1.1 Reliance on the HTTP/1.1 Specification............ 3
+ 1.2 Access Authentication Framework................... 3
+ 2 Basic Authentication Scheme.......................... 5
+ 3 Digest Access Authentication Scheme.................. 6
+ 3.1 Introduction...................................... 6
+ 3.1.1 Purpose......................................... 6
+ 3.1.2 Overall Operation............................... 6
+ 3.1.3 Representation of digest values................. 7
+ 3.1.4 Limitations..................................... 7
+ 3.2 Specification of Digest Headers................... 7
+ 3.2.1 The WWW-Authenticate Response Header............ 8
+ 3.2.2 The Authorization Request Header................ 11
+ 3.2.3 The Authentication-Info Header.................. 15
+ 3.3 Digest Operation.................................. 17
+ 3.4 Security Protocol Negotiation..................... 18
+ 3.5 Example........................................... 18
+ 3.6 Proxy-Authentication and Proxy-Authorization...... 19
+ 4 Security Considerations.............................. 19
+ 4.1 Authentication of Clients using Basic
+ Authentication.................................... 19
+ 4.2 Authentication of Clients using Digest
+ Authentication.................................... 20
+ 4.3 Limited Use Nonce Values.......................... 21
+ 4.4 Comparison of Digest with Basic Authentication.... 22
+ 4.5 Replay Attacks.................................... 22
+ 4.6 Weakness Created by Multiple Authentication
+ Schemes........................................... 23
+ 4.7 Online dictionary attacks......................... 23
+ 4.8 Man in the Middle................................. 24
+ 4.9 Chosen plaintext attacks.......................... 24
+ 4.10 Precomputed dictionary attacks.................... 25
+ 4.11 Batch brute force attacks......................... 25
+ 4.12 Spoofing by Counterfeit Servers................... 25
+ 4.13 Storing passwords................................. 26
+ 4.14 Summary........................................... 26
+ 5 Sample implementation................................ 27
+ 6 Acknowledgments...................................... 31
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 2]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ 7 References........................................... 31
+ 8 Authors' Addresses................................... 32
+ 9 Full Copyright Statement............................. 34
+
+1 Access Authentication
+
+1.1 Reliance on the HTTP/1.1 Specification
+
+ This specification is a companion to the HTTP/1.1 specification [2].
+ It uses the augmented BNF section 2.1 of that document, and relies on
+ both the non-terminals defined in that document and other aspects of
+ the HTTP/1.1 specification.
+
+1.2 Access Authentication Framework
+
+ HTTP provides a simple challenge-response authentication mechanism
+ that MAY be used by a server to challenge a client request and by a
+ client to provide authentication information. It uses an extensible,
+ case-insensitive token to identify the authentication scheme,
+ followed by a comma-separated list of attribute-value pairs which
+ carry the parameters necessary for achieving authentication via that
+ scheme.
+
+ auth-scheme = token
+ auth-param = token "=" ( token | quoted-string )
+
+ The 401 (Unauthorized) response message is used by an origin server
+ to challenge the authorization of a user agent. This response MUST
+ include a WWW-Authenticate header field containing at least one
+ challenge applicable to the requested resource. The 407 (Proxy
+ Authentication Required) response message is used by a proxy to
+ challenge the authorization of a client and MUST include a Proxy-
+ Authenticate header field containing at least one challenge
+ applicable to the proxy for the requested resource.
+
+ challenge = auth-scheme 1*SP 1#auth-param
+
+ Note: User agents will need to take special care in parsing the WWW-
+ Authenticate or Proxy-Authenticate header field value if it contains
+ more than one challenge, or if more than one WWW-Authenticate header
+ field is provided, since the contents of a challenge may itself
+ contain a comma-separated list of authentication parameters.
+
+ The authentication parameter realm is defined for all authentication
+ schemes:
+
+ realm = "realm" "=" realm-value
+ realm-value = quoted-string
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 3]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ The realm directive (case-insensitive) is required for all
+ authentication schemes that issue a challenge. The realm value
+ (case-sensitive), in combination with the canonical root URL (the
+ absoluteURI for the server whose abs_path is empty; see section 5.1.2
+ of [2]) of the server being accessed, defines the protection space.
+ These realms allow the protected resources on a server to be
+ partitioned into a set of protection spaces, each with its own
+ authentication scheme and/or authorization database. The realm value
+ is a string, generally assigned by the origin server, which may have
+ additional semantics specific to the authentication scheme. Note that
+ there may be multiple challenges with the same auth-scheme but
+ different realms.
+
+ A user agent that wishes to authenticate itself with an origin
+ server--usually, but not necessarily, after receiving a 401
+ (Unauthorized)--MAY do so by including an Authorization header field
+ with the request. A client that wishes to authenticate itself with a
+ proxy--usually, but not necessarily, after receiving a 407 (Proxy
+ Authentication Required)--MAY do so by including a Proxy-
+ Authorization header field with the request. Both the Authorization
+ field value and the Proxy-Authorization field value consist of
+ credentials containing the authentication information of the client
+ for the realm of the resource being requested. The user agent MUST
+ choose to use one of the challenges with the strongest auth-scheme it
+ understands and request credentials from the user based upon that
+ challenge.
+
+ credentials = auth-scheme #auth-param
+
+ Note that many browsers will only recognize Basic and will require
+ that it be the first auth-scheme presented. Servers should only
+ include Basic if it is minimally acceptable.
+
+ The protection space determines the domain over which credentials can
+ be automatically applied. If a prior request has been authorized, the
+ same credentials MAY be reused for all other requests within that
+ protection space for a period of time determined by the
+ authentication scheme, parameters, and/or user preference. Unless
+ otherwise defined by the authentication scheme, a single protection
+ space cannot extend outside the scope of its server.
+
+ If the origin server does not wish to accept the credentials sent
+ with a request, it SHOULD return a 401 (Unauthorized) response. The
+ response MUST include a WWW-Authenticate header field containing at
+ least one (possibly new) challenge applicable to the requested
+ resource. If a proxy does not accept the credentials sent with a
+ request, it SHOULD return a 407 (Proxy Authentication Required). The
+ response MUST include a Proxy-Authenticate header field containing a
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 4]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ (possibly new) challenge applicable to the proxy for the requested
+ resource.
+
+ The HTTP protocol does not restrict applications to this simple
+ challenge-response mechanism for access authentication. Additional
+ mechanisms MAY be used, such as encryption at the transport level or
+ via message encapsulation, and with additional header fields
+ specifying authentication information. However, these additional
+ mechanisms are not defined by this specification.
+
+ Proxies MUST be completely transparent regarding user agent
+ authentication by origin servers. That is, they must forward the
+ WWW-Authenticate and Authorization headers untouched, and follow the
+ rules found in section 14.8 of [2]. Both the Proxy-Authenticate and
+ the Proxy-Authorization header fields are hop-by-hop headers (see
+ section 13.5.1 of [2]).
+
+2 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 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 [7]
+ encoded string in the credentials.
+
+ basic-credentials = base64-user-pass
+ base64-user-pass = <base64 [4] encoding of user-pass,
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 5]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ 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.
+
+3 Digest Access Authentication Scheme
+
+3.1 Introduction
+
+3.1.1 Purpose
+
+ The protocol referred to as "HTTP/1.0" includes the specification for
+ a Basic Access Authentication scheme[1]. That scheme is not
+ considered to be a secure method of user authentication, as the user
+ name and password are passed over the network in an unencrypted form.
+ This section provides the specification for a scheme that does not
+ send the password in cleartext, referred to as "Digest Access
+ Authentication".
+
+ The Digest Access Authentication scheme is not intended to be a
+ complete answer to the need for security in the World Wide Web. This
+ scheme provides no encryption of message content. The intent is
+ simply to create an access authentication method that avoids the most
+ serious flaws of Basic authentication.
+
+3.1.2 Overall Operation
+
+ Like Basic Access Authentication, the Digest scheme is based on a
+ simple challenge-response paradigm. The Digest scheme challenges
+ using a nonce value. A valid response contains a checksum (by
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 6]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ default, the MD5 checksum) of the username, the password, the given
+ nonce value, the HTTP method, and the requested URI. In this way, the
+ password is never sent in the clear. Just as with the Basic scheme,
+ the username and password must be prearranged in some fashion not
+ addressed by this document.
+
+3.1.3 Representation of digest values
+
+ An optional header allows the server to specify the algorithm used to
+ create the checksum or digest. By default the MD5 algorithm is used
+ and that is the only algorithm described in this document.
+
+ For the purposes of this document, an MD5 digest of 128 bits is
+ represented as 32 ASCII printable characters. The bits in the 128 bit
+ digest are converted from most significant to least significant bit,
+ four bits at a time to their ASCII presentation as follows. Each four
+ bits is represented by its familiar hexadecimal notation from the
+ characters 0123456789abcdef. That is, binary 0000 gets represented by
+ the character '0', 0001, by '1', and so on up to the representation
+ of 1111 as 'f'.
+
+3.1.4 Limitations
+
+ The Digest authentication scheme described in this document suffers
+ from many known limitations. It is intended as a replacement for
+ Basic authentication and nothing more. It is a password-based system
+ and (on the server side) suffers from all the same problems of any
+ password system. In particular, no provision is made in this protocol
+ for the initial secure arrangement between user and server to
+ establish the user's password.
+
+ Users and implementors should be aware that this protocol is not as
+ secure as Kerberos, and not as secure as any client-side private-key
+ scheme. Nevertheless it is better than nothing, better than what is
+ commonly used with telnet and ftp, and better than Basic
+ authentication.
+
+3.2 Specification of Digest Headers
+
+ The Digest Access Authentication scheme is conceptually similar to
+ the Basic scheme. The formats of the modified WWW-Authenticate header
+ line and the Authorization header line are specified below. In
+ addition, a new header, Authentication-Info, is specified.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 7]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+3.2.1 The WWW-Authenticate Response Header
+
+ If a server receives a request for an access-protected object, and an
+ acceptable Authorization header is not sent, the server responds with
+ a "401 Unauthorized" status code, and a WWW-Authenticate header as
+ per the framework defined above, which for the digest scheme is
+ utilized as follows:
+
+ challenge = "Digest" digest-challenge
+
+ digest-challenge = 1#( realm | [ domain ] | nonce |
+ [ opaque ] |[ stale ] | [ algorithm ] |
+ [ qop-options ] | [auth-param] )
+
+
+ domain = "domain" "=" <"> URI ( 1*SP URI ) <">
+ URI = absoluteURI | abs_path
+ nonce = "nonce" "=" nonce-value
+ nonce-value = quoted-string
+ opaque = "opaque" "=" quoted-string
+ stale = "stale" "=" ( "true" | "false" )
+ algorithm = "algorithm" "=" ( "MD5" | "MD5-sess" |
+ token )
+ qop-options = "qop" "=" <"> 1#qop-value <">
+ qop-value = "auth" | "auth-int" | token
+
+ The meanings of the values of the directives used above are as
+ follows:
+
+ realm
+ A string to be displayed to users so they know which username and
+ password to use. This string should contain at least the name of
+ the host performing the authentication and might additionally
+ indicate the collection of users who might have access. An example
+ might be "registered_users@gotham.news.com".
+
+ domain
+ A quoted, space-separated list of URIs, as specified in RFC XURI
+ [7], that define the protection space. If a URI is an abs_path, it
+ is relative to the canonical root URL (see section 1.2 above) of
+ the server being accessed. An absoluteURI in this list may refer to
+ a different server than the one being accessed. The client can use
+ this list to determine the set of URIs for which the same
+ authentication information may be sent: any URI that has a URI in
+ this list as a prefix (after both have been made absolute) may be
+ assumed to be in the same protection space. If this directive is
+ omitted or its value is empty, the client should assume that the
+ protection space consists of all URIs on the responding server.
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 8]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ This directive is not meaningful in Proxy-Authenticate headers, for
+ which the protection space is always the entire proxy; if present
+ it should be ignored.
+
+ nonce
+ A server-specified data string which should be uniquely generated
+ each time a 401 response is made. It is recommended that this
+ string be base64 or hexadecimal data. Specifically, since the
+ string is passed in the header lines as a quoted string, the
+ double-quote character is not allowed.
+
+ The contents of the nonce are implementation dependent. The quality
+ of the implementation depends on a good choice. A nonce might, for
+ example, be constructed as the base 64 encoding of
+
+ time-stamp H(time-stamp ":" ETag ":" private-key)
+
+ where time-stamp is a server-generated time or other non-repeating
+ value, ETag is the value of the HTTP ETag header associated with
+ the requested entity, and private-key is data known only to the
+ server. With a nonce of this form a server would recalculate the
+ hash portion after receiving the client authentication header and
+ reject the request if it did not match the nonce from that header
+ or if the time-stamp value is not recent enough. In this way the
+ server can limit the time of the nonce's validity. The inclusion of
+ the ETag prevents a replay request for an updated version of the
+ resource. (Note: including the IP address of the client in the
+ nonce would appear to offer the server the ability to limit the
+ reuse of the nonce to the same client that originally got it.
+ However, that would break proxy farms, where requests from a single
+ user often go through different proxies in the farm. Also, IP
+ address spoofing is not that hard.)
+
+ An implementation might choose not to accept a previously used
+ nonce or a previously used digest, in order to protect against a
+ replay attack. Or, an implementation might choose to use one-time
+ nonces or digests for POST or PUT requests and a time-stamp for GET
+ requests. For more details on the issues involved see section 4.
+ of this document.
+
+ The nonce is opaque to the client.
+
+ opaque
+ A string of data, specified by the server, which should be returned
+ by the client unchanged in the Authorization header of subsequent
+ requests with URIs in the same protection space. It is recommended
+ that this string be base64 or hexadecimal data.
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 9]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ stale
+ A flag, indicating that the previous request from the client was
+ rejected because the nonce value was stale. If stale is TRUE
+ (case-insensitive), the client may wish to simply retry the request
+ with a new encrypted response, without reprompting the user for a
+ new username and password. The server should only set stale to TRUE
+ if it receives a request for which the nonce is invalid but with a
+ valid digest for that nonce (indicating that the client knows the
+ correct username/password). If stale is FALSE, or anything other
+ than TRUE, or the stale directive is not present, the username
+ and/or password are invalid, and new values must be obtained.
+
+ algorithm
+ A string indicating a pair of algorithms used to produce the digest
+ and a checksum. If this is not present it is assumed to be "MD5".
+ If the algorithm is not understood, the challenge should be ignored
+ (and a different one used, if there is more than one).
+
+ In this document the string obtained by applying the digest
+ algorithm to the data "data" with secret "secret" will be denoted
+ by KD(secret, data), and the string obtained by applying the
+ checksum algorithm to the data "data" will be denoted H(data). The
+ notation unq(X) means the value of the quoted-string X without the
+ surrounding quotes.
+
+ For the "MD5" and "MD5-sess" algorithms
+
+ H(data) = MD5(data)
+
+ and
+
+ KD(secret, data) = H(concat(secret, ":", data))
+
+ i.e., the digest is the MD5 of the secret concatenated with a colon
+ concatenated with the data. The "MD5-sess" algorithm is intended to
+ allow efficient 3rd party authentication servers; for the
+ difference in usage, see the description in section 3.2.2.2.
+
+ qop-options
+ This directive is optional, but is made so only for backward
+ compatibility with RFC 2069 [6]; it SHOULD be used by all
+ implementations compliant with this version of the Digest scheme.
+ If present, it is a quoted string of one or more tokens indicating
+ the "quality of protection" values supported by the server. The
+ value "auth" indicates authentication; the value "auth-int"
+ indicates authentication with integrity protection; see the
+
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 10]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ descriptions below for calculating the response directive value for
+ the application of this choice. Unrecognized options MUST be
+ ignored.
+
+ auth-param
+ This directive allows for future extensions. Any unrecognized
+ directive MUST be ignored.
+
+3.2.2 The Authorization Request Header
+
+ The client is expected to retry the request, passing an Authorization
+ header line, which is defined according to the framework above,
+ utilized as follows.
+
+ credentials = "Digest" digest-response
+ digest-response = 1#( username | realm | nonce | digest-uri
+ | response | [ algorithm ] | [cnonce] |
+ [opaque] | [message-qop] |
+ [nonce-count] | [auth-param] )
+
+ username = "username" "=" username-value
+ username-value = quoted-string
+ digest-uri = "uri" "=" digest-uri-value
+ digest-uri-value = request-uri ; As specified by HTTP/1.1
+ message-qop = "qop" "=" qop-value
+ cnonce = "cnonce" "=" cnonce-value
+ cnonce-value = nonce-value
+ nonce-count = "nc" "=" nc-value
+ nc-value = 8LHEX
+ response = "response" "=" request-digest
+ request-digest = <"> 32LHEX <">
+ LHEX = "0" | "1" | "2" | "3" |
+ "4" | "5" | "6" | "7" |
+ "8" | "9" | "a" | "b" |
+ "c" | "d" | "e" | "f"
+
+ The values of the opaque and algorithm fields must be those supplied
+ in the WWW-Authenticate response header for the entity being
+ requested.
+
+ response
+ A string of 32 hex digits computed as defined below, which proves
+ that the user knows a password
+
+ username
+ The user's name in the specified realm.
+
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 11]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ digest-uri
+ The URI from Request-URI of the Request-Line; duplicated here
+ because proxies are allowed to change the Request-Line in transit.
+
+ qop
+ Indicates what "quality of protection" the client has applied to
+ the message. If present, its value MUST be one of the alternatives
+ the server indicated it supports in the WWW-Authenticate header.
+ These values affect the computation of the request-digest. Note
+ that this is a single token, not a quoted list of alternatives as
+ in WWW- Authenticate. This directive is optional in order to
+ preserve backward compatibility with a minimal implementation of
+ RFC 2069 [6], but SHOULD be used if the server indicated that qop
+ is supported by providing a qop directive in the WWW-Authenticate
+ header field.
+
+ cnonce
+ This MUST be specified if a qop directive is sent (see above), and
+ MUST NOT be specified if the server did not send a qop directive in
+ the WWW-Authenticate header field. The cnonce-value is an opaque
+ quoted string value provided by the client and used by both client
+ and server to avoid chosen plaintext attacks, to provide mutual
+ authentication, and to provide some message integrity protection.
+ See the descriptions below of the calculation of the response-
+ digest and request-digest values.
+
+ nonce-count
+ This MUST be specified if a qop directive is sent (see above), and
+ MUST NOT be specified if the server did not send a qop directive in
+ the WWW-Authenticate header field. The nc-value is the hexadecimal
+ count of the number of requests (including the current request)
+ that the client has sent with the nonce value in this request. For
+ example, in the first request sent in response to a given nonce
+ value, the client sends "nc=00000001". The purpose of this
+ directive is to allow the server to detect request replays by
+ maintaining its own copy of this count - if the same nc-value is
+ seen twice, then the request is a replay. See the description
+ below of the construction of the request-digest value.
+
+ auth-param
+ This directive allows for future extensions. Any unrecognized
+ directive MUST be ignored.
+
+ If a directive or its value is improper, or required directives are
+ missing, the proper response is 400 Bad Request. If the request-
+ digest is invalid, then a login failure should be logged, since
+ repeated login failures from a single client may indicate an attacker
+ attempting to guess passwords.
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 12]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ The definition of request-digest above indicates the encoding for its
+ value. The following definitions show how the value is computed.
+
+3.2.2.1 Request-Digest
+
+ If the "qop" value is "auth" or "auth-int":
+
+ request-digest = <"> < KD ( H(A1), unq(nonce-value)
+ ":" nc-value
+ ":" unq(cnonce-value)
+ ":" unq(qop-value)
+ ":" H(A2)
+ ) <">
+
+ If the "qop" directive is not present (this construction is for
+ compatibility with RFC 2069):
+
+ request-digest =
+ <"> < KD ( H(A1), unq(nonce-value) ":" H(A2) ) >
+ <">
+
+ See below for the definitions for A1 and A2.
+
+3.2.2.2 A1
+
+ If the "algorithm" directive's value is "MD5" or is unspecified, then
+ A1 is:
+
+ A1 = unq(username-value) ":" unq(realm-value) ":" passwd
+
+ where
+
+ passwd = < user's password >
+
+ If the "algorithm" directive's value is "MD5-sess", then A1 is
+ calculated only once - on the first request by the client following
+ receipt of a WWW-Authenticate challenge from the server. It uses the
+ server nonce from that challenge, and the first client nonce value to
+ construct A1 as follows:
+
+ A1 = H( unq(username-value) ":" unq(realm-value)
+ ":" passwd )
+ ":" unq(nonce-value) ":" unq(cnonce-value)
+
+ This creates a 'session key' for the authentication of subsequent
+ requests and responses which is different for each "authentication
+ session", thus limiting the amount of material hashed with any one
+ key. (Note: see further discussion of the authentication session in
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 13]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ section 3.3.) Because the server need only use the hash of the user
+ credentials in order to create the A1 value, this construction could
+ be used in conjunction with a third party authentication service so
+ that the web server would not need the actual password value. The
+ specification of such a protocol is beyond the scope of this
+ specification.
+
+3.2.2.3 A2
+
+ If the "qop" directive's value is "auth" or is unspecified, then A2
+ is:
+
+ A2 = Method ":" digest-uri-value
+
+ If the "qop" value is "auth-int", then A2 is:
+
+ A2 = Method ":" digest-uri-value ":" H(entity-body)
+
+3.2.2.4 Directive values and quoted-string
+
+ Note that the value of many of the directives, such as "username-
+ value", are defined as a "quoted-string". However, the "unq" notation
+ indicates that surrounding quotation marks are removed in forming the
+ string A1. Thus if the Authorization header includes the fields
+
+ username="Mufasa", realm=myhost@testrealm.com
+
+ and the user Mufasa has password "Circle Of Life" then H(A1) would be
+ H(Mufasa:myhost@testrealm.com:Circle Of Life) with no quotation marks
+ in the digested string.
+
+ No white space is allowed in any of the strings to which the digest
+ function H() is applied unless that white space exists in the quoted
+ strings or entity body whose contents make up the string to be
+ digested. For example, the string A1 illustrated above must be
+
+ Mufasa:myhost@testrealm.com:Circle Of Life
+
+ with no white space on either side of the colons, but with the white
+ space between the words used in the password value. Likewise, the
+ other strings digested by H() must not have white space on either
+ side of the colons which delimit their fields unless that white space
+ was in the quoted strings or entity body being digested.
+
+ Also note that if integrity protection is applied (qop=auth-int), the
+ H(entity-body) is the hash of the entity body, not the message body -
+ it is computed before any transfer encoding is applied by the sender
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 14]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ and after it has been removed by the recipient. Note that this
+ includes multipart boundaries and embedded headers in each part of
+ any multipart content-type.
+
+3.2.2.5 Various considerations
+
+ The "Method" value is the HTTP request method as specified in section
+ 5.1.1 of [2]. The "request-uri" value is the Request-URI from the
+ request line as specified in section 5.1.2 of [2]. This may be "*",
+ an "absoluteURL" or an "abs_path" as specified in section 5.1.2 of
+ [2], but it MUST agree with the Request-URI. In particular, it MUST
+ be an "absoluteURL" if the Request-URI is an "absoluteURL". The
+ "cnonce-value" is an optional client-chosen value whose purpose is
+ to foil chosen plaintext attacks.
+
+ The authenticating server must assure that the resource designated by
+ the "uri" directive is the same as the resource specified in the
+ Request-Line; if they are not, the server SHOULD return a 400 Bad
+ Request error. (Since this may be a symptom of an attack, server
+ implementers may want to consider logging such errors.) The purpose
+ of duplicating information from the request URL in this field is to
+ deal with the possibility that an intermediate proxy may alter the
+ client's Request-Line. This altered (but presumably semantically
+ equivalent) request would not result in the same digest as that
+ calculated by the client.
+
+ Implementers should be aware of how authenticated transactions
+ interact with shared caches. The HTTP/1.1 protocol specifies that
+ when a shared cache (see section 13.7 of [2]) has received a request
+ containing an Authorization header and a response from relaying that
+ request, it MUST NOT return that response as a reply to any other
+ request, unless one of two Cache-Control (see section 14.9 of [2])
+ directives was present in the response. If the original response
+ included the "must-revalidate" Cache-Control directive, the cache MAY
+ use the entity of that response in replying to a subsequent request,
+ but MUST first revalidate it with the origin server, using the
+ request headers from the new request to allow the origin server to
+ authenticate the new request. Alternatively, if the original response
+ included the "public" Cache-Control directive, the response entity
+ MAY be returned in reply to any subsequent request.
+
+3.2.3 The Authentication-Info Header
+
+ The Authentication-Info header is used by the server to communicate
+ some information regarding the successful authentication in the
+ response.
+
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 15]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ AuthenticationInfo = "Authentication-Info" ":" auth-info
+ auth-info = 1#(nextnonce | [ message-qop ]
+ | [ response-auth ] | [ cnonce ]
+ | [nonce-count] )
+ nextnonce = "nextnonce" "=" nonce-value
+ response-auth = "rspauth" "=" response-digest
+ response-digest = <"> *LHEX <">
+
+ The value of the nextnonce directive is the nonce the server wishes
+ the client to use for a future authentication response. The server
+ may send the Authentication-Info header with a nextnonce field as a
+ means of implementing one-time or otherwise changing nonces. If the
+ nextnonce field is present the client SHOULD use it when constructing
+ the Authorization header for its next request. Failure of the client
+ to do so may result in a request to re-authenticate from the server
+ with the "stale=TRUE".
+
+ Server implementations should carefully consider the performance
+ implications of the use of this mechanism; pipelined requests will
+ not be possible if every response includes a nextnonce directive
+ that must be used on the next request received by the server.
+ Consideration should be given to the performance vs. security
+ tradeoffs of allowing an old nonce value to be used for a limited
+ time to permit request pipelining. Use of the nonce-count can
+ retain most of the security advantages of a new server nonce
+ without the deleterious affects on pipelining.
+
+ message-qop
+ Indicates the "quality of protection" options applied to the
+ response by the server. The value "auth" indicates authentication;
+ the value "auth-int" indicates authentication with integrity
+ protection. The server SHOULD use the same value for the message-
+ qop directive in the response as was sent by the client in the
+ corresponding request.
+
+ The optional response digest in the "response-auth" directive
+ supports mutual authentication -- the server proves that it knows the
+ user's secret, and with qop=auth-int also provides limited integrity
+ protection of the response. The "response-digest" value is calculated
+ as for the "request-digest" in the Authorization header, except that
+ if "qop=auth" or is not specified in the Authorization header for the
+ request, A2 is
+
+ A2 = ":" digest-uri-value
+
+ and if "qop=auth-int", then A2 is
+
+ A2 = ":" digest-uri-value ":" H(entity-body)
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 16]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ where "digest-uri-value" is the value of the "uri" directive on the
+ Authorization header in the request. The "cnonce-value" and "nc-
+ value" MUST be the ones for the client request to which this message
+ is the response. The "response-auth", "cnonce", and "nonce-count"
+ directives MUST BE present if "qop=auth" or "qop=auth-int" is
+ specified.
+
+ The Authentication-Info header is allowed in the trailer of an HTTP
+ message transferred via chunked transfer-coding.
+
+3.3 Digest Operation
+
+ Upon receiving the Authorization header, the server may check its
+ validity by looking up the password that corresponds to the submitted
+ username. Then, the server must perform the same digest operation
+ (e.g., MD5) performed by the client, and compare the result to the
+ given request-digest value.
+
+ Note that the HTTP server does not actually need to know the user's
+ cleartext password. As long as H(A1) is available to the server, the
+ validity of an Authorization header may be verified.
+
+ The client response to a WWW-Authenticate challenge for a protection
+ space starts an authentication session with that protection space.
+ The authentication session lasts until the client receives another
+ WWW-Authenticate challenge from any server in the protection space. A
+ client should remember the username, password, nonce, nonce count and
+ opaque values associated with an authentication session to use to
+ construct the Authorization header in future requests within that
+ protection space. The Authorization header may be included
+ preemptively; doing so improves server efficiency and avoids extra
+ round trips for authentication challenges. The server may choose to
+ accept the old Authorization header information, even though the
+ nonce value included might not be fresh. Alternatively, the server
+ may return a 401 response with a new nonce value, causing the client
+ to retry the request; by specifying stale=TRUE with this response,
+ the server tells the client to retry with the new nonce, but without
+ prompting for a new username and password.
+
+ Because the client is required to return the value of the opaque
+ directive given to it by the server for the duration of a session,
+ the opaque data may be used to transport authentication session state
+ information. (Note that any such use can also be accomplished more
+ easily and safely by including the state in the nonce.) For example,
+ a server could be responsible for authenticating content that
+ actually sits on another server. It would achieve this by having the
+ first 401 response include a domain directive whose value includes a
+ URI on the second server, and an opaque directive whose value
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 17]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ contains the state information. The client will retry the request, at
+ which time the server might respond with a 301/302 redirection,
+ pointing to the URI on the second server. The client will follow the
+ redirection, and pass an Authorization header , including the
+ <opaque> data.
+
+ As with the basic scheme, proxies must be completely transparent in
+ the Digest access authentication scheme. That is, they must forward
+ the WWW-Authenticate, Authentication-Info and Authorization headers
+ untouched. If a proxy wants to authenticate a client before a request
+ is forwarded to the server, it can be done using the Proxy-
+ Authenticate and Proxy-Authorization headers described in section 3.6
+ below.
+
+3.4 Security Protocol Negotiation
+
+ It is useful for a server to be able to know which security schemes a
+ client is capable of handling.
+
+ It is possible that a server may want to require Digest as its
+ authentication method, even if the server does not know that the
+ client supports it. A client is encouraged to fail gracefully if the
+ server specifies only authentication schemes it cannot handle.
+
+3.5 Example
+
+ The following example assumes that an access-protected document is
+ being requested from the server via a GET request. The URI of the
+ document is "http://www.nowhere.org/dir/index.html". Both client and
+ server know that the username for this document is "Mufasa", and the
+ password is "Circle Of Life" (with one space between each of the
+ three words).
+
+ The first time the client requests the document, no Authorization
+ header is sent, so the server responds with:
+
+ HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized
+ WWW-Authenticate: Digest
+ realm="testrealm@host.com",
+ qop="auth,auth-int",
+ nonce="dcd98b7102dd2f0e8b11d0f600bfb0c093",
+ opaque="5ccc069c403ebaf9f0171e9517f40e41"
+
+ The client may prompt the user for the username and password, after
+ which it will respond with a new request, including the following
+ Authorization header:
+
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 18]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ Authorization: Digest username="Mufasa",
+ realm="testrealm@host.com",
+ nonce="dcd98b7102dd2f0e8b11d0f600bfb0c093",
+ uri="/dir/index.html",
+ qop=auth,
+ nc=00000001,
+ cnonce="0a4f113b",
+ response="6629fae49393a05397450978507c4ef1",
+ opaque="5ccc069c403ebaf9f0171e9517f40e41"
+
+3.6 Proxy-Authentication and Proxy-Authorization
+
+ The digest authentication scheme may also be used for authenticating
+ users to proxies, proxies to proxies, or proxies to origin servers by
+ use of the Proxy-Authenticate and Proxy-Authorization headers. These
+ headers are instances of the Proxy-Authenticate and Proxy-
+ Authorization headers specified in sections 10.33 and 10.34 of the
+ HTTP/1.1 specification [2] and their behavior is subject to
+ restrictions described there. The transactions for proxy
+ authentication are very similar to those already described. Upon
+ receiving a request which requires authentication, the proxy/server
+ must issue the "407 Proxy Authentication Required" response with a
+ "Proxy-Authenticate" header. The digest-challenge used in the
+ Proxy-Authenticate header is the same as that for the WWW-
+ Authenticate header as defined above in section 3.2.1.
+
+ The client/proxy must then re-issue the request with a Proxy-
+ Authorization header, with directives as specified for the
+ Authorization header in section 3.2.2 above.
+
+ On subsequent responses, the server sends Proxy-Authentication-Info
+ with directives the same as those for the Authentication-Info header
+ field.
+
+ Note that in principle a client could be asked to authenticate itself
+ to both a proxy and an end-server, but never in the same response.
+
+4 Security Considerations
+
+4.1 Authentication of Clients using Basic Authentication
+
+ 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 additional authentication schemes and
+ encryption mechanisms from being employed to increase security or the
+ addition of enhancements (such as schemes to use one-time passwords)
+ to Basic authentication.
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 19]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ 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. It is this problem which Digest Authentication
+ attempts to address.
+
+ Because Basic authentication involves the cleartext transmission of
+ passwords it SHOULD NOT be used (without enhancements) to protect
+ sensitive or valuable information.
+
+ 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.
+
+4.2 Authentication of Clients using Digest Authentication
+
+ Digest Authentication does not provide a strong authentication
+ mechanism, when compared to public key based mechanisms, for example.
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 20]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ However, it is significantly stronger than (e.g.) CRAM-MD5, which has
+ been proposed for use with LDAP [10], POP and IMAP (see RFC 2195
+ [9]). It is intended to replace the much weaker and even more
+ dangerous Basic mechanism.
+
+ Digest Authentication offers no confidentiality protection beyond
+ protecting the actual password. All of the rest of the request and
+ response are available to an eavesdropper.
+
+ Digest Authentication offers only limited integrity protection for
+ the messages in either direction. If qop=auth-int mechanism is used,
+ those parts of the message used in the calculation of the WWW-
+ Authenticate and Authorization header field response directive values
+ (see section 3.2 above) are protected. Most header fields and their
+ values could be modified as a part of a man-in-the-middle attack.
+
+ Many needs for secure HTTP transactions cannot be met by Digest
+ Authentication. For those needs TLS or SHTTP are more appropriate
+ protocols. In particular Digest authentication cannot be used for any
+ transaction requiring confidentiality protection. Nevertheless many
+ functions remain for which Digest authentication is both useful and
+ appropriate. Any service in present use that uses Basic should be
+ switched to Digest as soon as practical.
+
+4.3 Limited Use Nonce Values
+
+ The Digest scheme uses a server-specified nonce to seed the
+ generation of the request-digest value (as specified in section
+ 3.2.2.1 above). As shown in the example nonce in section 3.2.1, the
+ server is free to construct the nonce such that it may only be used
+ from a particular client, for a particular resource, for a limited
+ period of time or number of uses, or any other restrictions. Doing
+ so strengthens the protection provided against, for example, replay
+ attacks (see 4.5). However, it should be noted that the method
+ chosen for generating and checking the nonce also has performance and
+ resource implications. For example, a server may choose to allow
+ each nonce value to be used only once by maintaining a record of
+ whether or not each recently issued nonce has been returned and
+ sending a next-nonce directive in the Authentication-Info header
+ field of every response. This protects against even an immediate
+ replay attack, but has a high cost checking nonce values, and perhaps
+ more important will cause authentication failures for any pipelined
+ requests (presumably returning a stale nonce indication). Similarly,
+ incorporating a request-specific element such as the Etag value for a
+ resource limits the use of the nonce to that version of the resource
+ and also defeats pipelining. Thus it may be useful to do so for
+ methods with side effects but have unacceptable performance for those
+ that do not.
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 21]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+4.4 Comparison of Digest with Basic Authentication
+
+ Both Digest and Basic Authentication are very much on the weak end of
+ the security strength spectrum. But a comparison between the two
+ points out the utility, even necessity, of replacing Basic by Digest.
+
+ The greatest threat to the type of transactions for which these
+ protocols are used is network snooping. This kind of transaction
+ might involve, for example, online access to a database whose use is
+ restricted to paying subscribers. With Basic authentication an
+ eavesdropper can obtain the password of the user. This not only
+ permits him to access anything in the database, but, often worse,
+ will permit access to anything else the user protects with the same
+ password.
+
+ By contrast, with Digest Authentication the eavesdropper only gets
+ access to the transaction in question and not to the user's password.
+ The information gained by the eavesdropper would permit a replay
+ attack, but only with a request for the same document, and even that
+ may be limited by the server's choice of nonce.
+
+4.5 Replay Attacks
+
+ A replay attack against Digest authentication would usually be
+ pointless for a simple GET request since an eavesdropper would
+ already have seen the only document he could obtain with a replay.
+ This is because the URI of the requested document is digested in the
+ client request and the server will only deliver that document. By
+ contrast under Basic Authentication once the eavesdropper has the
+ user's password, any document protected by that password is open to
+ him.
+
+ Thus, for some purposes, it is necessary to protect against replay
+ attacks. A good Digest implementation can do this in various ways.
+ The server created "nonce" value is implementation dependent, but if
+ it contains a digest of the client IP, a time-stamp, the resource
+ ETag, and a private server key (as recommended above) then a replay
+ attack is not simple. An attacker must convince the server that the
+ request is coming from a false IP address and must cause the server
+ to deliver the document to an IP address different from the address
+ to which it believes it is sending the document. An attack can only
+ succeed in the period before the time-stamp expires. Digesting the
+ client IP and time-stamp in the nonce permits an implementation which
+ does not maintain state between transactions.
+
+ For applications where no possibility of replay attack can be
+ tolerated the server can use one-time nonce values which will not be
+ honored for a second use. This requires the overhead of the server
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 22]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ remembering which nonce values have been used until the nonce time-
+ stamp (and hence the digest built with it) has expired, but it
+ effectively protects against replay attacks.
+
+ An implementation must give special attention to the possibility of
+ replay attacks with POST and PUT requests. Unless the server employs
+ one-time or otherwise limited-use nonces and/or insists on the use of
+ the integrity protection of qop=auth-int, an attacker could replay
+ valid credentials from a successful request with counterfeit form
+ data or other message body. Even with the use of integrity protection
+ most metadata in header fields is not protected. Proper nonce
+ generation and checking provides some protection against replay of
+ previously used valid credentials, but see 4.8.
+
+4.6 Weakness Created by Multiple Authentication Schemes
+
+ An HTTP/1.1 server may return multiple challenges with a 401
+ (Authenticate) response, and each challenge may use a different
+ auth-scheme. A user agent MUST choose to use the strongest auth-
+ scheme it understands and request credentials from the user based
+ upon that challenge.
+
+ Note that many browsers will only recognize Basic and will require
+ that it be the first auth-scheme presented. Servers should only
+ include Basic if it is minimally acceptable.
+
+ When the server offers choices of authentication schemes using the
+ WWW-Authenticate header, the strength of the resulting authentication
+ is only as good as that of the of the weakest of the authentication
+ schemes. See section 4.8 below for discussion of particular attack
+ scenarios that exploit multiple authentication schemes.
+
+4.7 Online dictionary attacks
+
+ If the attacker can eavesdrop, then it can test any overheard
+ nonce/response pairs against a list of common words. Such a list is
+ usually much smaller than the total number of possible passwords. The
+ cost of computing the response for each password on the list is paid
+ once for each challenge.
+
+ The server can mitigate this attack by not allowing users to select
+ passwords that are in a dictionary.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 23]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+4.8 Man in the Middle
+
+ Both Basic and Digest authentication are vulnerable to "man in the
+ middle" (MITM) attacks, for example, from a hostile or compromised
+ proxy. Clearly, this would present all the problems of eavesdropping.
+ But it also offers some additional opportunities to the attacker.
+
+ A possible man-in-the-middle attack would be to add a weak
+ authentication scheme to the set of choices, hoping that the client
+ will use one that exposes the user's credentials (e.g. password). For
+ this reason, the client should always use the strongest scheme that
+ it understands from the choices offered.
+
+ An even better MITM attack would be to remove all offered choices,
+ replacing them with a challenge that requests only Basic
+ authentication, then uses the cleartext credentials from the Basic
+ authentication to authenticate to the origin server using the
+ stronger scheme it requested. A particularly insidious way to mount
+ such a MITM attack would be to offer a "free" proxy caching service
+ to gullible users.
+
+ User agents should consider measures such as presenting a visual
+ indication at the time of the credentials request of what
+ authentication scheme is to be used, or remembering the strongest
+ authentication scheme ever requested by a server and produce a
+ warning message before using a weaker one. It might also be a good
+ idea for the user agent to be configured to demand Digest
+ authentication in general, or from specific sites.
+
+ Or, a hostile proxy might spoof the client into making a request the
+ attacker wanted rather than one the client wanted. Of course, this is
+ still much harder than a comparable attack against Basic
+ Authentication.
+
+4.9 Chosen plaintext attacks
+
+ With Digest authentication, a MITM or a malicious server can
+ arbitrarily choose the nonce that the client will use to compute the
+ response. This is called a "chosen plaintext" attack. The ability to
+ choose the nonce is known to make cryptanalysis much easier [8].
+
+ However, no way to analyze the MD5 one-way function used by Digest
+ using chosen plaintext is currently known.
+
+ The countermeasure against this attack is for clients to be
+ configured to require the use of the optional "cnonce" directive;
+ this allows the client to vary the input to the hash in a way not
+ chosen by the attacker.
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 24]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+4.10 Precomputed dictionary attacks
+
+ With Digest authentication, if the attacker can execute a chosen
+ plaintext attack, the attacker can precompute the response for many
+ common words to a nonce of its choice, and store a dictionary of
+ (response, password) pairs. Such precomputation can often be done in
+ parallel on many machines. It can then use the chosen plaintext
+ attack to acquire a response corresponding to that challenge, and
+ just look up the password in the dictionary. Even if most passwords
+ are not in the dictionary, some might be. Since the attacker gets to
+ pick the challenge, the cost of computing the response for each
+ password on the list can be amortized over finding many passwords. A
+ dictionary with 100 million password/response pairs would take about
+ 3.2 gigabytes of disk storage.
+
+ The countermeasure against this attack is to for clients to be
+ configured to require the use of the optional "cnonce" directive.
+
+4.11 Batch brute force attacks
+
+ With Digest authentication, a MITM can execute a chosen plaintext
+ attack, and can gather responses from many users to the same nonce.
+ It can then find all the passwords within any subset of password
+ space that would generate one of the nonce/response pairs in a single
+ pass over that space. It also reduces the time to find the first
+ password by a factor equal to the number of nonce/response pairs
+ gathered. This search of the password space can often be done in
+ parallel on many machines, and even a single machine can search large
+ subsets of the password space very quickly -- reports exist of
+ searching all passwords with six or fewer letters in a few hours.
+
+ The countermeasure against this attack is to for clients to be
+ configured to require the use of the optional "cnonce" directive.
+
+4.12 Spoofing by Counterfeit Servers
+
+ Basic Authentication is vulnerable to spoofing by counterfeit
+ servers. If a user can be led to believe that she is connecting to a
+ host containing information protected by a password she knows, when
+ in fact she is connecting to a hostile server, then the hostile
+ server can request a password, store it away for later use, and feign
+ an error. This type of attack is more difficult with Digest
+ Authentication -- but the client must know to demand that Digest
+ authentication be used, perhaps using some of the techniques
+ described above to counter "man-in-the-middle" attacks. Again, the
+ user can be helped in detecting this attack by a visual indication of
+ the authentication mechanism in use with appropriate guidance in
+ interpreting the implications of each scheme.
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 25]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+4.13 Storing passwords
+
+ Digest authentication requires that the authenticating agent (usually
+ the server) store some data derived from the user's name and password
+ in a "password file" associated with a given realm. Normally this
+ might contain pairs consisting of username and H(A1), where H(A1) is
+ the digested value of the username, realm, and password as described
+ above.
+
+ The security implications of this are that if this password file is
+ compromised, then an attacker gains immediate access to documents on
+ the server using this realm. Unlike, say a standard UNIX password
+ file, this information need not be decrypted in order to access
+ documents in the server realm associated with this file. On the other
+ hand, decryption, or more likely a brute force attack, would be
+ necessary to obtain the user's password. This is the reason that the
+ realm is part of the digested data stored in the password file. It
+ means that if one Digest authentication password file is compromised,
+ it does not automatically compromise others with the same username
+ and password (though it does expose them to brute force attack).
+
+ There are two important security consequences of this. First the
+ password file must be protected as if it contained unencrypted
+ passwords, because for the purpose of accessing documents in its
+ realm, it effectively does.
+
+ A second consequence of this is that the realm string should be
+ unique among all realms which any single user is likely to use. In
+ particular a realm string should include the name of the host doing
+ the authentication. The inability of the client to authenticate the
+ server is a weakness of Digest Authentication.
+
+4.14 Summary
+
+ By modern cryptographic standards Digest Authentication is weak. But
+ for a large range of purposes it is valuable as a replacement for
+ Basic Authentication. It remedies some, but not all, weaknesses of
+ Basic Authentication. Its strength may vary depending on the
+ implementation. In particular the structure of the nonce (which is
+ dependent on the server implementation) may affect the ease of
+ mounting a replay attack. A range of server options is appropriate
+ since, for example, some implementations may be willing to accept the
+ server overhead of one-time nonces or digests to eliminate the
+ possibility of replay. Others may satisfied with a nonce like the one
+ recommended above restricted to a single IP address and a single ETag
+ or with a limited lifetime.
+
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 26]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ The bottom line is that *any* compliant implementation will be
+ relatively weak by cryptographic standards, but *any* compliant
+ implementation will be far superior to Basic Authentication.
+
+5 Sample implementation
+
+ The following code implements the calculations of H(A1), H(A2),
+ request-digest and response-digest, and a test program which computes
+ the values used in the example of section 3.5. It uses the MD5
+ implementation from RFC 1321.
+
+ File "digcalc.h":
+
+#define HASHLEN 16
+typedef char HASH[HASHLEN];
+#define HASHHEXLEN 32
+typedef char HASHHEX[HASHHEXLEN+1];
+#define IN
+#define OUT
+
+/* calculate H(A1) as per HTTP Digest spec */
+void DigestCalcHA1(
+ IN char * pszAlg,
+ IN char * pszUserName,
+ IN char * pszRealm,
+ IN char * pszPassword,
+ IN char * pszNonce,
+ IN char * pszCNonce,
+ OUT HASHHEX SessionKey
+ );
+
+/* calculate request-digest/response-digest as per HTTP Digest spec */
+void DigestCalcResponse(
+ IN HASHHEX HA1, /* H(A1) */
+ IN char * pszNonce, /* nonce from server */
+ IN char * pszNonceCount, /* 8 hex digits */
+ IN char * pszCNonce, /* client nonce */
+ IN char * pszQop, /* qop-value: "", "auth", "auth-int" */
+ IN char * pszMethod, /* method from the request */
+ IN char * pszDigestUri, /* requested URL */
+ IN HASHHEX HEntity, /* H(entity body) if qop="auth-int" */
+ OUT HASHHEX Response /* request-digest or response-digest */
+ );
+
+File "digcalc.c":
+
+#include <global.h>
+#include <md5.h>
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 27]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+#include <string.h>
+#include "digcalc.h"
+
+void CvtHex(
+ IN HASH Bin,
+ OUT HASHHEX Hex
+ )
+{
+ unsigned short i;
+ unsigned char j;
+
+ for (i = 0; i < HASHLEN; i++) {
+ j = (Bin[i] >> 4) & 0xf;
+ if (j <= 9)
+ Hex[i*2] = (j + '0');
+ else
+ Hex[i*2] = (j + 'a' - 10);
+ j = Bin[i] & 0xf;
+ if (j <= 9)
+ Hex[i*2+1] = (j + '0');
+ else
+ Hex[i*2+1] = (j + 'a' - 10);
+ };
+ Hex[HASHHEXLEN] = '\0';
+};
+
+/* calculate H(A1) as per spec */
+void DigestCalcHA1(
+ IN char * pszAlg,
+ IN char * pszUserName,
+ IN char * pszRealm,
+ IN char * pszPassword,
+ IN char * pszNonce,
+ IN char * pszCNonce,
+ OUT HASHHEX SessionKey
+ )
+{
+ MD5_CTX Md5Ctx;
+ HASH HA1;
+
+ MD5Init(&Md5Ctx);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, pszUserName, strlen(pszUserName));
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, ":", 1);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, pszRealm, strlen(pszRealm));
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, ":", 1);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, pszPassword, strlen(pszPassword));
+ MD5Final(HA1, &Md5Ctx);
+ if (stricmp(pszAlg, "md5-sess") == 0) {
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 28]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ MD5Init(&Md5Ctx);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, HA1, HASHLEN);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, ":", 1);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, pszNonce, strlen(pszNonce));
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, ":", 1);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, pszCNonce, strlen(pszCNonce));
+ MD5Final(HA1, &Md5Ctx);
+ };
+ CvtHex(HA1, SessionKey);
+};
+
+/* calculate request-digest/response-digest as per HTTP Digest spec */
+void DigestCalcResponse(
+ IN HASHHEX HA1, /* H(A1) */
+ IN char * pszNonce, /* nonce from server */
+ IN char * pszNonceCount, /* 8 hex digits */
+ IN char * pszCNonce, /* client nonce */
+ IN char * pszQop, /* qop-value: "", "auth", "auth-int" */
+ IN char * pszMethod, /* method from the request */
+ IN char * pszDigestUri, /* requested URL */
+ IN HASHHEX HEntity, /* H(entity body) if qop="auth-int" */
+ OUT HASHHEX Response /* request-digest or response-digest */
+ )
+{
+ MD5_CTX Md5Ctx;
+ HASH HA2;
+ HASH RespHash;
+ HASHHEX HA2Hex;
+
+ // calculate H(A2)
+ MD5Init(&Md5Ctx);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, pszMethod, strlen(pszMethod));
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, ":", 1);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, pszDigestUri, strlen(pszDigestUri));
+ if (stricmp(pszQop, "auth-int") == 0) {
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, ":", 1);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, HEntity, HASHHEXLEN);
+ };
+ MD5Final(HA2, &Md5Ctx);
+ CvtHex(HA2, HA2Hex);
+
+ // calculate response
+ MD5Init(&Md5Ctx);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, HA1, HASHHEXLEN);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, ":", 1);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, pszNonce, strlen(pszNonce));
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, ":", 1);
+ if (*pszQop) {
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 29]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, pszNonceCount, strlen(pszNonceCount));
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, ":", 1);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, pszCNonce, strlen(pszCNonce));
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, ":", 1);
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, pszQop, strlen(pszQop));
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, ":", 1);
+ };
+ MD5Update(&Md5Ctx, HA2Hex, HASHHEXLEN);
+ MD5Final(RespHash, &Md5Ctx);
+ CvtHex(RespHash, Response);
+};
+
+File "digtest.c":
+
+
+#include <stdio.h>
+#include "digcalc.h"
+
+void main(int argc, char ** argv) {
+
+ char * pszNonce = "dcd98b7102dd2f0e8b11d0f600bfb0c093";
+ char * pszCNonce = "0a4f113b";
+ char * pszUser = "Mufasa";
+ char * pszRealm = "testrealm@host.com";
+ char * pszPass = "Circle Of Life";
+ char * pszAlg = "md5";
+ char szNonceCount[9] = "00000001";
+ char * pszMethod = "GET";
+ char * pszQop = "auth";
+ char * pszURI = "/dir/index.html";
+ HASHHEX HA1;
+ HASHHEX HA2 = "";
+ HASHHEX Response;
+
+ DigestCalcHA1(pszAlg, pszUser, pszRealm, pszPass, pszNonce,
+pszCNonce, HA1);
+ DigestCalcResponse(HA1, pszNonce, szNonceCount, pszCNonce, pszQop,
+ pszMethod, pszURI, HA2, Response);
+ printf("Response = %s\n", Response);
+};
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 30]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+6 Acknowledgments
+
+ Eric W. Sink, of AbiSource, Inc., was one of the original authors
+ before the specification underwent substantial revision.
+
+ In addition to the authors, valuable discussion instrumental in
+ creating this document has come from Peter J. Churchyard, Ned Freed,
+ and David M. Kristol.
+
+ Jim Gettys and Larry Masinter edited this document for update.
+
+7 References
+
+ [1] Berners-Lee, T., Fielding, R. and H. Frystyk, "Hypertext
+ Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.0", RFC 1945, May 1996.
+
+ [2] Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frysyk, H., Masinter, L.,
+ Leach, P. and T. Berners-Lee, "Hypertext Transfer Protocol --
+ HTTP/1.1", RFC 2616, June 1999.
+
+ [3] Rivest, R., "The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm", RFC 1321, April
+ 1992.
+
+ [4] Freed, N. and N. Borenstein. "Multipurpose Internet Mail
+ Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies",
+ RFC 2045, November 1996.
+
+ [5] Dierks, T. and C. Allen "The TLS Protocol, Version 1.0", RFC
+ 2246, January 1999.
+
+ [6] Franks, J., Hallam-Baker, P., Hostetler, J., Leach, P.,
+ Luotonen, A., Sink, E. and L. Stewart, "An Extension to HTTP :
+ Digest Access Authentication", RFC 2069, January 1997.
+
+ [7] Berners Lee, T, Fielding, R. and L. Masinter, "Uniform Resource
+ Identifiers (URI): Generic Syntax", RFC 2396, August 1998.
+
+ [8] Kaliski, B.,Robshaw, M., "Message Authentication with MD5",
+ CryptoBytes, Sping 1995, RSA Inc,
+ (http://www.rsa.com/rsalabs/pubs/cryptobytes/spring95/md5.htm)
+
+ [9] Klensin, J., Catoe, R. and P. Krumviede, "IMAP/POP AUTHorize
+ Extension for Simple Challenge/Response", RFC 2195, September
+ 1997.
+
+ [10] Morgan, B., Alvestrand, H., Hodges, J., Wahl, M.,
+ "Authentication Methods for LDAP", Work in Progress.
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 31]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+8 Authors' Addresses
+
+ John Franks
+ Professor of Mathematics
+ Department of Mathematics
+ Northwestern University
+ Evanston, IL 60208-2730, USA
+
+ EMail: john@math.nwu.edu
+
+
+ Phillip M. Hallam-Baker
+ Principal Consultant
+ Verisign Inc.
+ 301 Edgewater Place
+ Suite 210
+ Wakefield MA 01880, USA
+
+ EMail: pbaker@verisign.com
+
+
+ Jeffery L. Hostetler
+ Software Craftsman
+ AbiSource, Inc.
+ 6 Dunlap Court
+ Savoy, IL 61874
+
+ EMail: jeff@AbiSource.com
+
+
+ Scott D. Lawrence
+ Agranat Systems, Inc.
+ 5 Clocktower Place, Suite 400
+ Maynard, MA 01754, USA
+
+ EMail: lawrence@agranat.com
+
+
+ Paul J. Leach
+ Microsoft Corporation
+ 1 Microsoft Way
+ Redmond, WA 98052, USA
+
+ EMail: paulle@microsoft.com
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 32]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+ Ari Luotonen
+ Member of Technical Staff
+ Netscape Communications Corporation
+ 501 East Middlefield Road
+ Mountain View, CA 94043, USA
+
+
+ Lawrence C. Stewart
+ Open Market, Inc.
+ 215 First Street
+ Cambridge, MA 02142, USA
+
+ EMail: stewart@OpenMarket.com
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 33]
+
+RFC 2617 HTTP Authentication June 1999
+
+
+9. Full Copyright Statement
+
+ Copyright (C) The Internet Society (1999). All Rights Reserved.
+
+ This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
+ others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
+ or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published
+ and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any
+ kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
+ included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
+ document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
+ the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
+ Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of
+ developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for
+ copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be
+ followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than
+ English.
+
+ The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
+ revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.
+
+ This document and the information contained herein is provided on an
+ "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING
+ TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING
+ BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION
+ HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
+ MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Acknowledgement
+
+ Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the
+ Internet Society.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Franks, et al. Standards Track [Page 34]
+