Re: LDAP authentication with password encryption from browser to web server

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On 9/24/2010 4:28 PM, Mark Tischler wrote:
>  I have been looking through a lot of documentation on this subject, both on apache.org
> and elsewhere, and I can't seem to find an answer to the following question:
> 
> Our Apache web server (version 2.2.11 running on Solaris 10) is currently authenticating
> users via LDAP successfully.  But, we would like to have an *encrypted* password sent from
> *the browser to the Apache web server* when authenticating via LDAP.  I understand that
> encryption is performed from the web server to the LDAP server by using ldaps, which we
> are using, but we are getting complaints that the password is traveling from the users'
> web browsers to our Apache web server in the clear (not encrypted).  The problem really
> requires that the web browsers and Apache support an encrypted authentication over http
> instead of counting on wrapping everything via https.  It would be nice if the public key
> encryption worked between the browser and Apache for the password part.
> 
> I understand that I could force the users to use an https URL instead of an http URL, but
> that seems like it would be overkill.  If that is the only solution to this issue, then we
> would really want the user to authenticate over https, but then fall back to http for all
> of the rest of the communications to the web server so as not to incur the inherent
> performance penalty of https.  Any hints on how to do that effectively/efficiently would
> be welcome in that case.
> 
> I also understand that using the Digest method of authentication (vs. Basic) does not work
> with LDAP, because, if I understand it correctly, this method doesn't even send the
> password, which, of course, LDAP would need.

The only way to secure Basic auth is with SSL.  Basic is simply encoded in 64 bit space
to make it safe for 7-bit transport.  What you want is Digest auth, which then ties the
digest key to the hashed user/pass/domain and secures the token from being snarfed for
requests from yet a third IP address.

I don't know of any simple mechanism to store digest credentials in ldap (see htdigest
and the mod_auth_digest module for further details).


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