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HTTP/1.1, part 7: AuthenticationNetwork Working GroupR. Fielding, EditorInternet-DraftDay SoftwareObsoletes: 2068, 2616 (if approved)J. GettysUpdates: 2617 (if approved)One Laptop per ChildIntended status: Standards TrackJ. MogulExpires: June 22, 2008HPH. FrystykMicrosoftL. MasinterAdobe SystemsP. LeachMicrosoftT. Berners-LeeW3C/MITDecember 20, 2007HTTP/1.1, part 7: Authenticationdraft-ietf-httpbis-p7-auth-00Status of this MemoBy submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79.¶Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts.¶Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as “work in progress”.¶The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt.¶The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.¶This Internet-Draft will expire on June 22, 2008.¶AbstractThe Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application-level protocol for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP has been in use by the World Wide Web global information initiative since 1990. This document is Part 7 of the seven-part specification that defines the protocol referred to as "HTTP/1.1" and, taken together, obsoletes RFC 2616. Part 7 defines HTTP Authentication.¶Editorial Note (To be removed by RFC Editor)This version of the HTTP specification contains only minimal editorial changes from [RFC2616] (abstract, introductory paragraph, and authors' addresses). All other changes are due to partitioning the original into seven mostly independent parts. The intent is for readers of future drafts to able to use draft 00 as the basis for comparison when the WG makes later changes to the specification text. This draft will shortly be followed by draft 01 (containing the first round of changes that have already been agreed to on the mailing list). There is no point in reviewing this draft other than to verify that the partitioning has been done correctly. Roy T. Fielding, Yves Lafon, and Julian Reschke will be the editors after draft 00 is submitted.¶Discussion of this draft should take place on the HTTPBIS working group mailing list (ietf-http-wg@w3.org). The current issues list is at <http://www3.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/trac/report/11> and related documents (including fancy diffs) can be found at <http://www3.tools.ietf.org/wg/httpbis/>.¶Table of Contents1. Introduction2. Status Code Definitions2.1. 401 Unauthorized2.2. 407 Proxy Authentication Required3. Header Field Definitions3.1. Authorization3.2. Proxy-Authenticate3.3. Proxy-Authorization3.4. WWW-Authenticate4. IANA Considerations5. Security Considerations5.1. Authentication Credentials and Idle Clients6. Acknowledgments7. ReferencesIndexAuthors' AddressesIntellectual Property and Copyright Statements1. IntroductionThis document will define aspects of HTTP related to access control and authentication. Right now it only includes the extracted relevant sections of RFC 2616 [RFC2616] with only minor edits.¶HTTP provides several OPTIONAL challenge-response authentication mechanisms which can be used by a server to challenge a client request and by a client to provide authentication information. The general framework for access authentication, and the specification of "basic" and "digest" authentication, are specified in "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication" [RFC2617]. This specification adopts the definitions of "challenge" and "credentials" from that specification.¶2. Status Code Definitions2.1. 401 UnauthorizedThe request requires user authentication. The response MUST include a WWW-Authenticate header field (Section 3.4) containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource. The client MAY repeat the request with a suitable Authorization header field (Section 3.1). If the request already included Authorization credentials, then the 401 response indicates that authorization has been refused for those credentials. If the 401 response contains the same challenge as the prior response, and the user agent has already attempted authentication at least once, then the user SHOULD be presented the entity that was given in the response, since that entity might include relevant diagnostic information. HTTP access authentication is explained in "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication" [RFC2617].¶2.2. 407 Proxy Authentication RequiredThis code is similar to 401 (Unauthorized), but indicates that the client must first authenticate itself with the proxy. The proxy MUST return a Proxy-Authenticate header field (Section 3.2) containing a challenge applicable to the proxy for the requested resource. The client MAY repeat the request with a suitable Proxy-Authorization header field (Section 3.3). HTTP access authentication is explained in "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication" [RFC2617].¶3. Header Field DefinitionsThis section defines the syntax and semantics of all standard HTTP/1.1 header fields. For entity-header fields, both sender and recipient refer to either the client or the server, depending on who sends and who receives the entity.¶3.1. AuthorizationA user agent that wishes to authenticate itself with a server-- usually, but not necessarily, after receiving a 401 response--does so by including an Authorization request-header field with the request. The Authorization field value consists of credentials containing the authentication information of the user agent for the realm of the resource being requested.¶       Authorization  = "Authorization" ":" credentials
HTTP access authentication is described in "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication" [RFC2617]. If a request is authenticated and a realm specified, the same credentials SHOULD be valid for all other requests within this realm (assuming that the authentication scheme itself does not require otherwise, such as credentials that vary according to a challenge value or using synchronized clocks).¶When a shared cache (see Section 2.7 of [Part6]) receives a request containing an Authorization field, it MUST NOT return the corresponding response as a reply to any other request, unless one of the following specific exceptions holds:¶If the response includes the "s-maxage" cache-control directive, the cache MAY use that response in replying to a subsequent request. But (if the specified maximum age has passed) a proxy cache 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. (This is the defined behavior for s-maxage.) If the response includes "s-maxage=0", the proxy MUST always revalidate it before re-using it.If the response includes the "must-revalidate" cache-control directive, the cache MAY use that response in replying to a subsequent request. But if the response is stale, all caches 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.If the response includes the "public" cache-control directive, it MAY be returned in reply to any subsequent request.3.2. Proxy-AuthenticateThe Proxy-Authenticate response-header field MUST be included as part of a 407 (Proxy Authentication Required) response. The field value consists of a challenge that indicates the authentication scheme and parameters applicable to the proxy for this Request-URI.¶    Proxy-Authenticate  = "Proxy-Authenticate" ":" 1#challenge
The HTTP access authentication process is described in "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication" [RFC2617]. Unlike WWW-Authenticate, the Proxy-Authenticate header field applies only to the current connection and SHOULD NOT be passed on to downstream clients. However, an intermediate proxy might need to obtain its own credentials by requesting them from the downstream client, which in some circumstances will appear as if the proxy is forwarding the Proxy-Authenticate header field.¶3.3. Proxy-AuthorizationThe Proxy-Authorization request-header field allows the client to identify itself (or its user) to a proxy which requires authentication. The Proxy-Authorization field value consists of credentials containing the authentication information of the user agent for the proxy and/or realm of the resource being requested.¶    Proxy-Authorization     = "Proxy-Authorization" ":" credentials
The HTTP access authentication process is described in "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication" [RFC2617]. Unlike Authorization, the Proxy-Authorization header field applies only to the next outbound proxy that demanded authentication using the Proxy-Authenticate field. When multiple proxies are used in a chain, the Proxy-Authorization header field is consumed by the first outbound proxy that was expecting to receive credentials. A proxy MAY relay the credentials from the client request to the next proxy if that is the mechanism by which the proxies cooperatively authenticate a given request.¶3.4. WWW-AuthenticateThe WWW-Authenticate response-header field MUST be included in 401 (Unauthorized) response messages. The field value consists of at least one challenge that indicates the authentication scheme(s) and parameters applicable to the Request-URI.¶    WWW-Authenticate  = "WWW-Authenticate" ":" 1#challenge
The HTTP access authentication process is described in "HTTP Authentication: Basic and Digest Access Authentication" [RFC2617]. User agents are advised to take special care in parsing the WWW-Authenticate field value as it might contain more than one challenge, or if more than one WWW-Authenticate header field is provided, the contents of a challenge itself can contain a comma-separated list of authentication parameters.¶4. IANA ConsiderationsTBD.¶5. Security ConsiderationsThis section is meant to inform application developers, information providers, and users of the security limitations in HTTP/1.1 as described by this document. The discussion does not include definitive solutions to the problems revealed, though it does make some suggestions for reducing security risks.¶5.1. Authentication Credentials and Idle ClientsExisting HTTP clients and user agents typically retain authentication information indefinitely. HTTP/1.1. does not provide a method for a server to direct clients to discard these cached credentials. This is a significant defect that requires further extensions to HTTP. Circumstances under which credential caching can interfere with the application's security model include but are not limited to: ¶Clients which have been idle for an extended period following which the server might wish to cause the client to reprompt the user for credentials.Applications which include a session termination indication (such as a `logout' or `commit' button on a page) after which the server side of the application `knows' that there is no further reason for the client to retain the credentials.This is currently under separate study. There are a number of work-arounds to parts of this problem, and we encourage the use of password protection in screen savers, idle time-outs, and other methods which mitigate the security problems inherent in this problem. In particular, user agents which cache credentials are encouraged to provide a readily accessible mechanism for discarding cached credentials under user control.¶6. AcknowledgmentsBased on an XML translation of RFC 2616 by Julian Reschke.¶7. References[Part6]Fielding, R., Ed., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, “HTTP/1.1, part 6: Caching”, Internet-Draft draft-ietf-httpbis-p6-cache-00 (work in progress), December 2007.[RFC2616]Fielding, R., Gettys, J., Mogul, J., Frystyk, H., Masinter, L., Leach, P., and T. Berners-Lee, “Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1”, RFC 2616, June 1999.[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.Index4 A G H P R S W 4401 Unauthorized (status code) 2.1407 Proxy Authentication Required (status code) 2.2AAuthorization header 2.1, 3.1GGrammar Authorization 3.1Proxy-Authenticate 3.2Proxy-Authorization 3.3WWW-Authenticate 3.4HHeaders Authorization 2.1, 3.1Proxy-Authenticate 2.2, 3.2Proxy-Authorization 2.2, 3.3WWW-Authenticate 2.1, 3.4PPart6 3.1, 7Section 2.7 3.1Proxy-Authenticate header 2.2, 3.2Proxy-Authorization header 2.2, 3.3RRFC2616 §, 1, 7RFC2617 1, 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 7SStatus Codes 401 Unauthorized 2.1407 Proxy Authentication Required 2.2WWWW-Authenticate header 2.1, 3.4Authors' AddressesRoy T. Fielding (editor)Day Software23 Corporate Plaza DR, Suite 280Newport Beach, CA 92660USAPhone: +1-949-706-5300Fax: +1-949-706-5305EMail: fielding@gbiv.comURI: http://roy.gbiv.com/Jim GettysOne Laptop per Child21 Oak Knoll RoadCarlisle, MA 01741USAEMail: jg@laptop.orgURI: http://www.laptop.org/Jeffrey C. MogulHewlett-Packard CompanyHP Labs, Large Scale Systems Group1501 Page Mill Road, MS 1177Palo Alto, CA 94304USAEMail: JeffMogul@acm.orgHenrik Frystyk NielsenMicrosoft Corporation1 Microsoft WayRedmond, WA 98052USAEMail: henrikn@microsoft.comLarry MasinterAdobe Systems, Incorporated345 Park AveSan Jose, CA 95110USAEMail: LMM@acm.orgURI: http://larry.masinter.net/Paul J. LeachMicrosoft Corporation1 Microsoft WayRedmond, WA 98052EMail: paulle@microsoft.comTim Berners-LeeWorld Wide Web ConsortiumMIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence LaboratoryThe Stata Center, Building 3232 Vassar StreetCambridge, MA 02139USAEMail: timbl@w3.orgURI: http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/Full Copyright StatementCopyright © The IETF Trust (2007).¶This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights.¶This document and the information contained herein are provided on an “AS IS” basis and THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE INTERNET SOCIETY, THE IETF TRUST AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIM 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.¶Intellectual PropertyThe IETF takes no position regarding the validity or scope of any Intellectual Property Rights or other rights that might be claimed to pertain to the implementation or use of the technology described in this document or the extent to which any license under such rights might or might not be available; nor does it represent that it has made any independent effort to identify any such rights. Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79.¶Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr.¶The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-ipr@ietf.org.¶