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IETF RFC 8053
Last modified on Thursday, January 26th, 2017
 Permanent link to RFC 8053
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Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) Y. Oiwa
Request for Comments: 8053 H. Watanabe
Category: Experimental H. Takagi
ISSN: 2070-1721 ITRI, AIST
K. Maeda
T. Hayashi
Lepidum
Y. Ioku
Individual Contributor
January 2017
HTTP Authentication Extensions for Interactive Clients
 Abstract
This document specifies extensions for the HTTP authentication
framework for interactive clients. Currently, fundamental features
of HTTP-level authentication are insufficient for complex
requirements of various Web-based applications. This forces these
applications to implement their own authentication frameworks by
means such as HTML forms, which becomes one of the hurdles against
introducing secure authentication mechanisms handled jointly by
servers and user agents. The extended framework fills gaps between
Web application requirements and HTTP authentication provisions to
solve the above problems, while maintaining compatibility with
existing Web and non-Web uses of HTTP authentication.
Status of This Memo
This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is
published for examination, experimental implementation, and
evaluation.
This document defines an Experimental Protocol for the Internet
community. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF). It represents the consensus of the IETF
community. It has received public review and has been approved for
publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not
all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of
Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841.
Information about the current status of this document, any errata,
and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at
http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 8053.
Oiwa, et al. Experimental PAGE 1 
RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2017 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must
include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
described in the Simplified BSD License.
Oiwa, et al. Experimental PAGE 2
RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1. Terminology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2. Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.1. Terms for Describing Authentication Protocol Flow . . . . 5
2.2. Syntax Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3. Optional Authentication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1. Note on Optional-WWW-Authenticate and Use of
WWW-Authenticate Header with Non-401 Status . . . . . . . 10
4. Authentication-Control Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.1. Non-ASCII Extended Header Parameters . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.2. Auth-Style Parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
4.3. Location-When-Unauthenticated Parameter . . . . . . . . . 14
4.4. No-Auth Parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
4.5. Location-When-Logout Parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.6. Logout-Timeout Parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.7. Username Parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
5. Usage Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
5.1. Example 1: A Portal Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.1.1. Case 1: A Simple Application . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.1.2. Case 2: Specific Action Required on Logout . . . . . 20
5.1.3. Case 3: Specific Page Displayed before Login . . . . 20
5.2. Example 2: Authenticated User-Only Sites . . . . . . . . 20
5.3. When to Use Cookies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.4. Parallel Deployment with Form/Cookie Authentication . . . 22
6. Methods to Extend This Protocol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
8.1. Security Implication of the Username Parameter . . . . . 24
9. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
9.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
9.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
Appendix A. (Informative) Applicability of Features for Each
Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
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RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
1. Introduction
This document defines several extensions to the current HTTP
authentication framework, to provide functionality comparable with
current, widely used, form-based Web authentication. A majority of
the recent websites on the Internet use custom application-layer
authentication implementations using Web forms. The reasons for
these may vary, but many people believe that the current HTTP Basic
and Digest authentication methods do not have enough functionality
(including good user interfaces) to support most realistic Web-based
applications. However, such use of form-based Web authentication has
several weaknesses against attacks like phishing, because all
behavior of the authentication is controlled from the server-side
application. This makes it really hard to implement any
cryptographically strong authentication mechanisms into Web systems.
To overcome this problem, we need to "modernize" the HTTP
authentication framework so that better client-controlled secure
methods can be used with Web applications. The extensions proposed
in this document include:
o optional authentication on HTTP (Section 3),
o log out from both the server and client side (Section 4), and
o finer control for redirection depending on the authentication
status (Section 4)
1.1. Terminology
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
[RFC 2119].
This document distinguishes the terms "client" and "user" in the
following way: a "client" is an entity understanding and talking HTTP
and the specified authentication protocol, usually computer software;
a "user" is a (usually natural) person who wants to access data
resources using "a client".
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RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
2. Definitions
2.1. Terms for Describing Authentication Protocol Flow
HTTP Authentication defined in [RFC 7235] can involve several pairs of
HTTP requests/responses. Throughout this document, the following
terms are used to categorize those messages.
For requests:
1) A non-authenticating request is a request not attempting any
authentication: a request without any Authorization header field.
2) An authenticating request is the opposite: a request with an
Authorization header field.
For responses:
1) A non-authenticated response is a response that does not involve
any HTTP authentication. It does not contain any WWW-Authenticate
([RFC 7235]) or Authentication-Info header field ([RFC 7615]).
Servers send this response when the requested resource is not
protected by an HTTP authentication mechanism. In the context of
this specification, non-authentication-related negative responses
(e.g., 403 and 404) are also considered non-authenticated
responses.
(See the note on successfully authenticated responses below for
some ambiguous cases.)
2) An authentication-initializing response is a response that
requires or allows clients to start authentication attempts.
Servers send this response when the requested resource is
protected by an HTTP authentication mechanism, and the request
meets one of the following cases:
* The request is a non-authenticating request, or
* The request contained an authentication trial directed to a
protection space (realm) other than the one that the server
expected.
The server will specify the protection space for authentication in
this response.
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RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
Upon receiving this response, the client's behavior is further
divided to two possible cases:
* If the client has no prior knowledge on authentication
credentials (e.g., a username and a password) related to the
requested protection space, the protocol flow terminates and
the client will ask the user to provide authentication
credentials.
* On the other hand, if the client already has enough
authentication credentials to the requested protection space,
the client will automatically send an authenticating request.
Such cases often occur when the client does not know beforehand
that the current request-URL requires authentication.
3) A successfully authenticated response is a response for an
authenticating request meaning that the authentication attempt was
granted. (Note: if the authentication scheme used does not use an
Authentication-Info header field, it can't be distinguished from a
non-authenticated response.)
4) An intermediate authenticating response is a response for an
authenticating request that requires more reaction by the client
software without involving users. Such a response is required
when an authentication scheme requires two or more round-trip
messages to perform authentication, or when an authentication
scheme uses some speculative short-cut method (such as uses of
cached shared secrets) and it fails.
5) A negatively authenticated response is a response for an
authenticating request, which means that the authentication
attempt was declined and cannot continue without a different set
of authentication credentials. Clients typically erase the memory
of the active credentials and ask the user for other ones.
Usually the format of these responses is the same as the one for
authentication-initializing responses. Clients can distinguish
negatively authenticated responses from authentication-
initializing responses by comparing the protection spaces
contained in the request and in the response.
Figure 1 shows a state diagram of generic HTTP authentication with
the above message categorization. Note that many authentication
schemes use only a subset of the transitions described in the
diagram. Labels in the figure show the abbreviated names of response
types.
Oiwa, et al. Experimental PAGE 6
RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
=========== -----------------
NEW REQUEST ( UNAUTHENTICATED )
=========== -----------------
| ^ non-auth.
v | response
+----------------------+ NO +-------------+
| The requested URI |--------------------------->| send normal |
| known to be auth'ed? | ---------------->| request |
+----------------------+ / +-------------+
YES | / initializing|
v / |
+------------------+ NO / |
| Can auth-req.(*1)|--------- |
| be constructed? | |
+------------------+ |
YES | initializing |
| ---------------------------------------. |
| / v v
| | ---------------- NO +-----------+
| | ( AUTH-REQUESTED )<------| passwords |
| | ---------------- |etc. known?|
v | +-----------+
+-----------+ negative ------------- negative |YES
| send |---------->( AUTH-FAILED )<---------, |
/| auth-req | ------------- | |
/ +-----------+\ | v
| \ \ intermediate +-----------+
| \ -------------------------------->| send |
| \ | auth-req |
| non-auth. \successful successful +-----------+
| response (*2) \ / | ^
v \ / | |
----------------- \ -------------- / `----'
( UNAUTHENTICATED ) ----->( AUTH-SUCCEED )<---- intermediate
----------------- --------------
Figure 1: Generic State Diagram for HTTP Authentication
Notes:
(*1) For example, the "Digest" scheme requires a server-provided
nonce to construct client-side challenges.
(*2) In "Basic" and some others, this cannot be distinguished from a
successfully authenticated response.
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RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
2.2. Syntax Notation
This specification uses an extended ABNF syntax defined in [RFC 7230]
and [RFC 5234]. The following syntax definitions are quoted from
[RFC 7230] and [RFC 7235]: auth-scheme, quoted-string, auth-param, SP,
BWS, header-field, and challenge. It also uses the convention of
using header field names for specifying the syntax of values for the
header field.
Additionally, this specification uses the following syntax
definitions as a refinement for token and the right-hand-side of
auth-param in [RFC 7235].
bare-token = bare-token-lead-char *bare-token-char
bare-token-lead-char = %x30-39 / %x41-5A / %x61-7A
bare-token-char = %x30-39 / %x41-5A / %x61-7A / "-" / "_"
extension-token = "-" bare-token 1*("." bare-token)
extensive-token = bare-token / extension-token
integer = "0" / (%x31-39 *%x30-39) ; no leading zeros
Figure 2: The BNF Syntax for Common Notations
Extensive-tokens are used in this protocol where the set of
acceptable tokens includes private extensions. Any extensions of
this protocol MAY use either bare-tokens allocated by IANA (under the
procedure described in Section 7), or extension-tokens with the
format "-<token>.<domain-name>", where <domain-name> is a valid
(sub-)domain name on the Internet owned by the party who defines the
extension.
3. Optional Authentication
The Optional-WWW-Authenticate header enables a non-mandatory
authentication, which is not possible under the current HTTP
authentication mechanism.
In several Web applications, users can access the same contents as
both a guest user and an authenticated user. In most Web
applications, this functionality is implemented using HTTP cookies
[RFC 6265] and custom form-based authentication. The new
authentication method using this message will provide a replacement
for these authentication systems.
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RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
Servers MAY send HTTP non-interim responses containing the
Optional-WWW-Authenticate header as a replacement for a 401 response
when it is authentication-initializing. The
Optional-WWW-Authenticate header MUST NOT be sent on 401 responses
(i.e., a usual WWW-Authenticate header MUST be used on 401
responses).
Optional-WWW-Authenticate = 1#challenge
Figure 3: BNF Syntax for Optional-WWW-Authenticate Header
Example:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Optional-WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="xxxx"
The challenges contained in the Optional-WWW-Authenticate header are
the same as those for a 401 response corresponding to the same
request. For authentication-related matters, an optional
authentication request will have the same meaning as a 401 message
with a corresponding WWW-Authenticate header (as an authentication-
initializing response). (The behavior for other matters MAY be
different between the optional authentication and 401 messages. For
example, clients MAY choose to cache the 200 messages with the
Optional-WWW-Authenticate header field but not the 401 messages by
default.)
A response with an Optional-WWW-Authenticate header SHOULD be
returned from the server only when the request is either non-
authenticated or authenticating to a wrong (not the server's
expected) protection space. If a response is either an intermediate
or a negative response to a client's authentication attempt, the
server MUST respond with a 401 status response with a
WWW-Authenticate header instead. Failure to comply with this rule
will render clients unable to distinguish between authentication
successes and failures.
The server is NOT RECOMMENDED to include an Optional-WWW-Authenticate
header in a positive response when a client's authentication attempt
succeeds.
Whenever an authentication scheme supports servers sending some
parameter that gives a hint about the URL space for the corresponding
protection space for the same realm (e.g., "path" or "domain"),
servers requesting non-mandatory authentication SHOULD send such a
parameter with the response. Clients supporting non-mandatory
authentication MUST recognize the parameter and MUST send a request
with an appropriate authentication credential in an Authorization
header for any URI inside the specified paths.
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RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
Implementations are not required to support this header for all of
their supported authentication schemes (i.e., they may choose to
implement it only for a subset of their supported schemes). New
authentication schemes can require support of the optional
authentication as a prerequisite, though.
3.1. Note on Optional-WWW-Authenticate and Use of WWW-Authenticate
Header with Non-401 Status
In the current specification of HTTP/1.1, it is clarified that the
WWW-Authenticate header can be used with messages with status codes
other than 401 (Authentication Required). In particular, the use of
the WWW-Authenticate header with the 200 status messages implies a
very similar meaning to the above-defined Optional-WWW-Authenticate
header.
The design of Optional-WWW-Authenticate header expects that the use
of a new header guarantees that clients that are unaware of this
extension will ignore the header, and that Web developers can rely on
that behavior to implement a secondary fallback method of
authentication. Several behavioral requirements written in the above
section also assume this property and define a necessary
functionality to implement an optional authentication reliably and
consistently.
On the other hand, some experiments and discussions on the IETF
mailing list revealed that most of (but not necessarily all of) the
existing HTTP clients, at the time of writing, just ignore the WWW-
Authenticate headers in non-401 messages, giving similar behavior
with the Optional-WWW-Authenticate. However, every corner case of
behavior was not fully tested or well-defined in the existing
specifications.
Considering these situations, the authors of this document chose to
use a new header for a new feature "experiment". This is to avoid
defining every corner-case behavior for the existing standard WWW-
Authentication header in this experimental document, which could be
considered by some implementers as an incompatible changes to
existing specification.
Experimentally, the authors propose that implementers of the standard
HTTP/1.1 specification (especially implementers of this extension)
implement undefined (implementation-dependent) detailed handling of
the WWW-Authenticate header with non-401 status messages similar as
those defined above for the Optional-WWW-Authenticate header. For
example, we propose that servers return the 401 status for failed
authentication attempts, even when the unauthenticated request to the
same resource will result in the 200 status. This can determine how
Oiwa, et al. Experimental PAGE 10
RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
(whether) non-mandatory authentication using the standard header
fields and status codes can be implemented. If this experiment is
successful, a future revision of this experimental document may
"bless" and recommend the use of a standard WWW-Authenticate header,
with some stricter requirements on some corner-case behavior.
4. Authentication-Control Header
Authentication-Control = 1#auth-control-entry
auth-control-entry = auth-scheme 1*SP 1#auth-control-param
auth-control-param = extensive-token BWS "=" BWS token
/ extensive-token "*" BWS "=" BWS ext-value
ext-value = <see RFC 5987, Section 3.2>
Figure 4: The BNF Syntax for the Authentication-Control Header
The Authentication-Control header provides more precise control of
the client behavior for Web applications using an HTTP authentication
protocol. This header is supposed to be generated in the application
layer, as opposed to the WWW-Authenticate headers, which will usually
be generated by the Web servers.
Clients MAY freely choose any subset of these parameters to be
supported. Also, these may choose to support any of the parameters
for only a subset of their supported authentication schemes.
However, authentication schemes can require/recommend support for
some of these parameters as a prerequisite.
The Authentication-Control header contains one or more
"authentication control entries", each of which corresponds to a
single realm for a specific authentication scheme. If the
auth-scheme specified for an entry supports the HTTP "realm" feature,
that entry MUST contain the "realm" parameter. If not, the entry
MUST NOT contain the "realm" parameter.
Among the multiple entries in the header, the relevant entries in the
header are those corresponding to an auth-scheme and a realm (if any)
for which "the authentication process is being performed or going to
be performed". In more detail:
(1) If the response is either an authentication-initializing
response or a negatively authenticated response, there can be
multiple challenges in the WWW-Authenticate header (or the
Optional-WWW-Authenticate header defined in this extension),
each of which corresponds to a different scheme and realm. In
this case, the client has a choice about the scheme and realm
they will use to authenticate. Only the entry in the
Oiwa, et al. Experimental PAGE 11
RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
Authentication-Control header corresponding to that scheme and
realm are relevant.
(2) If the response is either an intermediate authenticating
response or a successfully authenticated response, the scheme
and realm given in the Authorization header of the HTTP request
will determine the currently ongoing authentication process.
Only the entry corresponding to that scheme and realm are
relevant.
The server MAY send an Authentication-Control header containing non-
relevant entries. The client MUST ignore all non-relevant entries it
received.
Every entry contains one or more parameters, each of which is a name-
value pair. The name of each parameter MUST be an extensive-token.
Clients MUST ignore any unknown parameters contained in this header.
The entries for the same auth-scheme and the realm MUST NOT contain
duplicated parameters for the same name. Clients MAY either take any
one of those duplicated entries or ignore all of them.
The type of parameter value depends on the parameter name as defined
in the following subsections. Regardless of the type, however, the
recipients MUST accept both quoted and unquoted representations of
values as defined in HTTP. If the parameter is defined to have a
string value, implementations MUST send any value outside of the
"token" ABNF syntax in either a quoted form or an ext-value form (see
Section 4.1). If the parameter is defined as a token (or similar) or
an integer, the value SHOULD follow the corresponding ABNF syntax
after possible unquoting of the quoted-string value (as defined in
HTTP) and MUST be sent in a plain (not an ext-value) form. (Note:
the rest of this document will show all string-value parameters in
quoted forms, and it will show others in unquoted forms.)
Any parameters contained in this header MAY be ignored by clients.
Also, even when a client accepts this header, users are able to
circumvent the semantics of this header. Therefore, if this header
is used for security purposes, its use MUST be limited to providing
some non-fundamental additional security measures valuable for end-
users (such as client-side logout for protection against console
takeover). Server-side applications MUST NOT rely on the use of this
header for protecting server-side resources.
Note: The header syntax allows servers to specify Authentication-
Control for multiple authentication schemes, either as multiple
occurrences of this header or as a combined single header (see
Section 3.2.2 of [RFC 7230] for rationale). The same care as for
parsing multiple authentication challenges needs to be taken.
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4.1. Non-ASCII Extended Header Parameters
Parameters contained in the Authentication-Control header MAY be
extended to non-ASCII values using the framework described in
[RFC 5987]. All servers and clients MUST be capable of receiving and
sending values encoded in [RFC 5987] syntax.
If a value to be sent contains only ASCII characters, the field MUST
be sent using plain RFC 7235 syntax. The syntax as extended by
ext-value MUST NOT be used in this case.
If a value (except the "realm" header) contains one or more non-ASCII
characters, the parameter SHOULD be sent using the ext-value syntax
defined in Section 3.2 of [RFC 5987]. Such a parameter MUST have a
charset value of "UTF-8", and the language value MUST always be
omitted (have an empty value). The same parameter MUST NOT be sent
more than once, regardless of the syntax used.
For example, a parameter "username" with the value "Renee of France"
SHOULD be sent as < username="Renee of France" >. If the value is
"Ren<e acute>e of France", it SHOULD be sent as
< username*=UTF-8''Ren%C3%89e%20of%20France > instead.
Interoperability note: [RFC 7235], Section 2.2, defines the "realm"
authentication parameter that cannot be replaced by the "realm*"
extend parameter. This means that the use of non-ASCII values for an
authentication realm is not the defined behavior in HTTP.
Unfortunately, some people currently use a non-ASCII realm parameter
in reality, but even its encoding scheme is not well defined.
Given this background, this document does not specify how to handle a
non-ASCII "realm" parameter in the extended header fields. If
needed, the authors propose using a non-extended "realm" parameter
form, with a wish for maximum interoperability.
4.2. Auth-Style Parameter
Example:
Authentication-Control: Digest realm="protected space",
auth-style=modal
The parameter "auth-style" specifies the server's preference for user
interface behavior for user authentication. This parameter can be
included in any kind of response; however, it is only meaningful for
either authentication-initializing or negatively authenticated
responses. The value of this parameter MUST be one of the bare-
tokens, "modal" or "non-modal". When the Optional-WWW-Authenticate
header is used, the value of this parameter MUST be disregarded and
the value "non-modal" is implied.
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RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
The value "modal" means that the server thinks the content of the
response (body and other content-related headers) is valuable only
for users refusing the authentication request. The clients are
expected to ask the user for a password before processing the
content. This behavior is common for most of the current
implementations of Basic and Digest authentication schemes.
The value "non-modal" means that the server thinks that the content
of the response (body and other content-related headers) is valuable
for users before processing an authentication request. The clients
are expected to first process the content and then provide users with
the opportunity to perform authentication.
The default behavior for clients is implementation dependent, and it
may also depend on authentication schemes. The proposed default
behavior is "modal" for all authentication schemes unless otherwise
specified.
The above two different methods of authentication possibly introduce
an observable difference of semantics when the response contains
state-changing side effects; for example, it can affect how Cookie
headers [RFC 6265] in 401 responses are processed. However, the
server applications SHOULD NOT depend on the existence of such side
effects.
4.3. Location-When-Unauthenticated Parameter
Example:
Authentication-Control: Mutual realm="auth-space-1",
location-when-unauthenticated="http://www.example.com/login.html"
The parameter "location-when-unauthenticated" specifies a location to
which any unauthenticated clients should be redirected. This header
can be used, for example, when there is a central login page for the
entire Web application. The value of this parameter is a string that
contains a URL location. If a received URL is not absolute, the
clients SHOULD consider it a relative URL from the current location.
This parameter MAY be used with a 401 response for an authentication-
initializing response. It can also be contained, although this is
NOT RECOMMENDED, in a positive response with an
Optional-WWW-Authenticate header. The clients MUST ignore this
parameter when a response is either successfully authenticated or
intermediately authenticated.
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When a client receives an authentication-initiating response with
this parameter, and if the client has to ask users for authentication
credentials, the client will treat the entire response as if it were
a 303 "See Other" response with a Location header that contains the
value of this parameter (i.e., the client will be redirected to the
specified location with a GET request). Unlike a normal 303
response, if the client can process authentication without the user's
interaction, this parameter MUST be ignored.
4.4. No-Auth Parameter
Example:
Authentication-Control: Basic realm="entrance", no-auth=true
The parameter "no-auth" is a variant of the
location-when-unauthenticated parameter; it specifies that new
authentication attempts are not to be performed on this location in
order to improve the user experience, without specifying the
redirection on the HTTP level. This header can be used, for example,
when there is a central login page for the entire Web application and
when an explicit user interaction with the Web content is desired
before authentication. The value of this parameter MUST be a token
"true". If the value is incorrect, the client MAY ignore this
parameter.
This parameter MAY be used with authentication-initiating responses.
It can also be contained, although this is NOT RECOMMENDED, in a
positive response with an Optional-WWW-Authenticate header. The
clients MUST ignore this parameter when a response is either
successfully authenticated or intermediately authenticated.
When a client receives an authentication-initiating response with
this parameter, if the client has to ask users for authentication
credentials, the client will ignore the WWW-Authenticate header
contained in the response and treat the whole response as a normal
negative 4xx-class response instead of giving the user an opportunity
to start authentication. If the client can process authentication
without the user's interaction, this parameter MUST be ignored.
Using this parameter along with the location-when-unauthenticated
parameter is meaningless. If both were supplied, clients SHOULD
ignore the location-when-unauthenticated parameter.
This parameter SHOULD NOT be used as a security measure to prevent
authentication attempts, as it is easily circumvented by users. This
parameter SHOULD be used solely for improving the user experience of
Web applications.
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RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
4.5. Location-When-Logout Parameter
Example:
Authentication-Control: Digest realm="protected space",
location-when-logout="http://www.example.com/byebye.html"
The parameter "location-when-logout" specifies a location where the
client is to be redirected when the user explicitly requests a
logout. The value of this parameter MUST be a string that contains a
URL location. If a given URL is not absolute, the clients MUST
consider it a relative URL from the current location.
This parameter MAY be used with successfully authenticated responses.
If this parameter is contained in other kinds of responses, the
clients MUST ignore this parameter.
When the user tells the client to terminate the current
authentication period, if the client currently displays a page
supplied by a response with this parameter, the client will
automatically change the current location to the location specified
in this parameter using a new GET request, as if it has received a
303 response. Any operations related to logout (e.g., erasing
memories of username, authentication credential, and all related one-
time credentials such as nonce or keys) SHOULD occur before
processing a page transition.
When the user requests the client for the termination of an
authentication period, if the client supports this parameter but the
server response does not contain this parameter, the client's
RECOMMENDED behavior is as follows: if the request corresponding to
the current content was the GET method, reload the page without the
authentication credential. Otherwise, keep the current content as-is
and simply forget the authentication status. The client SHOULD NOT
replay a non-idempotent request without the user's explicit approval.
Web applications are encouraged to send this parameter with an
appropriate value for any responses (except those with redirection
(3XX) statuses) for non-GET requests.
See Section 5 for some examples for possible deployment of this
parameter.
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4.6. Logout-Timeout Parameter
Example:
Authentication-Control: Basic realm="entrance", logout-timeout=300
The parameter "logout-timeout", when contained in a successfully
authenticated response, means that any authentication credentials and
state related to the current protection space are to be discarded if
the time specified in this header (in seconds) has passed since the
time this header was received. The value MUST be an integer. As a
special case, the value 0 means that the server is logging the client
out immediately from the current authentication space and that the
client is now returned to the unauthenticated state. This does not,
however, mean that the long-term memories for the passwords and
passwords-related details (such as password reminders and auto fill-
ins) should be removed. If a new timeout value is received for the
same authentication space, it cancels the previous timeout and sets a
new timeout.
4.7. Username Parameter
Example:
Authentication-Control: Basic realm="configuration", username="admin"
The parameter "username" tells us that the only "username" to be
accepted by the server is the value given in this parameter.
This parameter is particularly useful, for example, for routers and
other network appliances with a Web configuration interface. Many of
those use an HTTP Basic authentication with one predefined username,
with many varieties such as "admin", "root", "user", etc. In the
current situation, users have almost no hint about the valid username
upon the authentication request. Some show the valid value in a
"realm" string, some in the 401-status response page, shown _after_
the user gave up the authentication and canceled the authentication
dialog. If this parameter is given, the client Web browser can auto-
fill the username field in the authentication dialog before the users
attempt to authenticate themselves.
This parameter MAY be used with authentication-initiating responses
or negatively authenticated responses requiring another attempt at
authentication. The clients MUST ignore this parameter when a
response is either successfully authenticated or intermediately
authenticated.
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If the authentication scheme to be used has a syntax limitation on
the allowed usernames (e.g., Basic and Digest do not allow colons in
usernames); the specified value MUST follow that limitation. Clients
SHOULD ignore any values that do not conform to such limitations.
Also, if the used authentication scheme requires a specific style of
text preparation for the username (e.g., PRECIS [RFC 7564] string
preparation or Unicode normalization), the server SHOULD send the
values satisfying such requirements (so that clients can use the
given username as is).
Clients MAY still send any authentication requests with other
usernames, possibly in vain. Clients are not required (also not
forbidden) to give users opportunities for supplying a username
different from the server-specified one. Servers are also not
strictly required to reject usernames other than specified, but doing
so will usually result in bad user experiences and may confuse users
and clients.
Although this parameter is useful in a specific class of use cases,
using it in a general use case has many security implications and
possible pitfalls. Please consult Section 8.1 before deciding to use
this parameter.
5. Usage Examples
This section shows some examples for applying this extension to
typical websites that use forms and cookies for managing
authentication and authorization. The content of this section is not
normative and is for illustrative purposes only.
In these examples, we assume that there are two kinds of clients (Web
browsers). One kind of these implements all features described in
the previous sections. We also assume that browsers will have a user
interface that allows users to deactivate (log out from) current
authentication sessions. The other kind are the "existing"
implementations that do not support any of these features.
When not explicitly specified, all settings described below are to be
applied with Authentication-Control headers, and these can be sent to
clients regardless of the authentication status (these will be
silently ignored whenever not effective).
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5.1. Example 1: A Portal Site
This subsection provides an example application for a site whose
structure is somewhat similar to conventional portal sites. In
particular, most Web pages are available for guest (unauthenticated)
users, and, if authentication is performed, the content of these
pages is customized for each user. We assume that the site has the
following kinds of pages currently:
o Content pages
o Pages/mechanism for performing authentication:
* There is one page that asks for a username and a password using
a HTML POST form.
* After the authentication attempt, the user will be redirected
to either the page that was previously displayed before the
authentication or some specific page.
o A de-authentication (logout) page.
5.1.1. Case 1: A Simple Application
When such a site does not require specific actions upon login and
logout, the following simple settings can be used:
o Set up an optional authentication to all pages available to
guests. Set up an Authentication-Control header with the "auth-
style=non-modal" setting.
o If there are pages only available to authenticated users, set up a
mandatory authentication with the "auth-style=non-modal" setting.
o No specific pages for authentication are needed. It will be
performed automatically, directed by the above setting.
o A de-authentication page is also not needed. If the site has one,
put "logout-timeout=0" there.
o For all pages for POST requests, it is advisable to have a
"location-when-logout=<some page>".
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5.1.2. Case 2: Specific Action Required on Logout
If the site requires specific actions upon logout, the following
settings can be used:
o All settings in Case 1 are applied.
o For all pages, set up the Authentication-Control header "location-
when-logout=<de-authentication page>".
o In the de-authentication page, no specific setup is needed. If
there are any direct links to the de-authentication page, put
"logout-timeout=0".
5.1.3. Case 3: Specific Page Displayed before Login
If the site needs to display a specific page before login actions
(some announcements, user notices, or even advertisements), the
following settings can be applied:
o Set up an optional authentication to all pages available to
guests. Set up an Authentication-Control header with
"no-auth=true". Put a link to a specific login page in contents.
o If there are pages only available to authenticated users, set up a
mandatory authentication with the
"location-when-unauthenticated=<the login page>".
o For the specific login page, set up a mandatory authentication.
o For all pages for POST requests, it is advisable to have
"location-when-logout=<some page>", too.
o De-authentication pages are not needed. If the site has one, put
"logout-timeout=0".
5.2. Example 2: Authenticated User-Only Sites
If almost all pages in the target site require authentication (e.g.,
an Internet banking site), or if there is no need to support both
unauthenticated and authenticated users on the same resource, the
settings will become simpler. The following are examples for such a
site:
o Set up a mandatory authentication to all pages available to
authenticated users. Set up an Authentication-Control header with
the "auth-style=non-modal" setting.
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o Set up a handler for the 401-status that requests users to
authenticate.
o For all pages for POST requests, it is advisable to have a
"location-when-logout=<some page>", too.
o De-authentication pages are not needed. If the site will have
one, put "logout-timeout=0" there.
5.3. When to Use Cookies
In current websites using form-based authentication, Cookies
[RFC 6265] are used for managing both authorization and application
sessions. Using the extensions in this document, the former features
will be provided by using (extended) HTTP authentication/
authorization mechanisms. In some cases, there will be ambiguity on
whether some functions are for authorization management or for
session management. The following hints will be helpful for deciding
which features to use.
o If there is a need to serve multiple sessions for a single user
using multiple browsers concurrently, use a Cookie for
distinguishing between sessions for the same user. (C.f. if there
is a need to distinguish between sessions in the same browser,
HTML5 Web Storage [W3C.REC-webstorage-20130730] features can be
used instead of Cookies.)
o If a website is currently deploying a session time-out feature,
consider who benefits from the feature. In most cases, the main
requirement for such a feature is to protect users from having
their consoles and browsers hijacked (i.e., benefits are on the
users' side). In such cases, the time-out features provided in
this extension can be used. On the other hand, the requirement is
to protect the server's privilege (e.g., when some regulations
require limiting the time difference between a user's two-factor
authentication and financial transaction commitment; the
requirement is strictly on the servers' side), that should be
managed on the server side using Cookies or other session-
management mechanisms.
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5.4. Parallel Deployment with Form/Cookie Authentication
In some transition periods, sites may need to support both HTTP-layer
and form-based authentication. The following example shows one way
to achieve that.
o If Cookies are used even for HTTP-authenticated users, each
session determined by Cookies SHOULD identify which authentication
has been used for the session.
o First, set up any of the above settings for enabling HTTP-layer
authentication.
o For unauthenticated users, add the following things to the Web
pages, unless the client supports this extension and HTTP-level
authentication:
* For non-mandatory authenticated pages, add a link to the form-
based authenticated pages.
* For mandatory authenticated pages, either put a link to form-
based authenticated pages or put an HTML-level redirection
(using <META http-equiv="refresh" ...> element) to such pages.
o In the form-based authenticated pages, if users are not
authenticated, the page can provide a redirection for HTTP-level
authentication by the "location-when-unauthenticated" setting.
o Users are identified for authorization and content customization
by the following logic:
* First, check the result of the HTTP-level authentication. If
there is a Cookie session tied to a specific user, both should
match.
* If the user is not authenticated on the HTTP-level, use the
conventional form-based method to determine the user.
* If there is a Cookie tied to HTTP authentication but there is
no corresponding HTTP authentication result, that session will
be discarded (because it means that authentication is
deactivated by the corresponding user).
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RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
6. Methods to Extend This Protocol
If a private extension to this protocol is implemented, it MUST use
the extension-param to avoid conflicts with this protocol and any
other extensions. (Standardized extensions or extensions that are
being standardized MAY use either bare-tokens or extension-tokens.)
When bare-tokens are used in this protocol, these MUST be allocated
by IANA. Any tokens used for non-private, non-experimental
parameters are RECOMMENDED to be registered with IANA, regardless of
the kind of tokens used.
Extension-tokens MAY be freely used for any non-standard, private,
and/or experimental uses. An extension-token MUST use the format
"-<bare-token>.<domain-name>", where <domain-name> is a validly
registered (sub-)domain name on the Internet owned by the party that
defines the extensions. Any unknown parameter name is to be ignored
regardless of whether it is an extension-token or a bare-token.
7. IANA Considerations
This document defines two new entries for the "Permanent Message
Header Field Names" registry.
+-------------+---------------------------+-------------------------+
| | Entry 1: | Entry 2: |
+-------------+---------------------------+-------------------------+
| Header | Optional-WWW-Authenticate | Authentication-Control |
| Field Name | | |
| Protocol | http | http |
| Status | experimental | experimental |
| Change | IETF | IETF |
| Control | | |
| Spec. | Section 3 of this | Section 4 of this |
| Document | document | document |
+-------------+---------------------------+-------------------------+
This document also establishes the "HTTP Authentication Control
Parameters" registry. The registry manages case-insensitive ASCII
strings. The string MUST follow the extensive-token syntax defined
in Section 2.2.
To acquire registered tokens, a specification for the use of such
tokens MUST be available as a publicly accessible document (see
"Specification Required" in [RFC 5226]).
Oiwa, et al. Experimental PAGE 23
RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
Registrations for authentication control parameters are required to
include a description of the control extension. New registrations
are advised to provide the following information:
o Token: A token used in HTTP headers for identifying the algorithm.
o Specification: A reference for the specification defining the
algorithm.
The initial content of this registry is as follows:
+-------------------------------+------------------------------+
| Token | Specification |
+-------------------------------+------------------------------+
| auth-style | Section 4.2 of this document |
| location-when-unauthenticated | Section 4.3 of this document |
| no-auth | Section 4.4 of this document |
| location-when-logout | Section 4.5 of this document |
| logout-timeout | Section 4.6 of this document |
| username | Section 4.7 of this document |
+-------------------------------+------------------------------+
8. Security Considerations
The purpose of the logout timeout feature in the Authentication-
control header is to protect users of clients from impersonation
caused by an attacker having access to the same console. The server
application implementers SHOULD be aware that the directive may
always be ignored by either malicious clients or clients not
supporting this extension. If the purpose of introducing a timeout
for an authentication period is to protect server-side resources,
this protection MUST be implemented by other means such as HTTP
Cookies [RFC 6265].
All parameters in the Authentication-Control header SHOULD NOT be
used for any security-enforcement purposes. Server-side applications
MUST NOT assume that the header will be honored by clients and users.
8.1. Security Implication of the Username Parameter
The "username" parameter sometimes reveals sensitive information
about the HTTP server and its configurations that are useful for
security attacks. In general, common security practice suggests that
any kind of information on the existence/non-existence of a specific
username shall not be disclosed before successful authentication.
Obviously, the "username" parameter contradicts this practice.
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RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
Given this background, the use of the "username" parameter SHOULD be
strictly limited to cases where all of the following conditions are
met:
(1) the valid username is pre-configured and not modifiable (such as
root, admin, or similar ones);
(2) the valid username for such an appliance is publicly known (for
example, written in a manual document); and
(3) either the valid username for the server is easily guessable by
other means (for example, from the model number shown in an
unauthenticated page), or the server is accessible only from
limited networks.
Most importantly, the "username" parameter SHOULD NOT be used in any
case when the valid usernames can be changed/configured by users or
administrators.
9. References
9.1. Normative References
[RFC 2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 2119, March 1997,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 2119>.
[RFC 5226] Narten, T. and H. Alvestrand, "Guidelines for Writing an
IANA Considerations Section in RFCs", BCP 26, RFC 5226,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 5226, May 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5226>.
[RFC 5234] Crocker, D., Ed. and P. Overell, "Augmented BNF for Syntax
Specifications: ABNF", STD 68, RFC 5234,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 5234, January 2008,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5234>.
[RFC 5987] Reschke, J., "Character Set and Language Encoding for
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Header Field
Parameters", RFC 5987, DOI 10.17487/RFC 5987, August 2010,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 5987>.
[RFC 7230] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Message Syntax and Routing",
RFC 7230, DOI 10.17487/RFC 7230, June 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7230>.
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RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
[RFC 7235] Fielding, R., Ed. and J. Reschke, Ed., "Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Authentication", RFC 7235,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 7235, June 2014,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7235>.
9.2. Informative References
[RFC 6265] Barth, A., "HTTP State Management Mechanism", RFC 6265,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 6265, April 2011,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 6265>.
[RFC 7564] Saint-Andre, P. and M. Blanchet, "PRECIS Framework:
Preparation, Enforcement, and Comparison of
Internationalized Strings in Application Protocols",
RFC 7564, DOI 10.17487/RFC 7564, May 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7564>.
[RFC 7615] Reschke, J., "HTTP Authentication-Info and Proxy-
Authentication-Info Response Header Fields", RFC 7615,
DOI 10.17487/RFC 7615, September 2015,
<http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/RFC 7615>.
[W3C.REC-webstorage-20130730]
Hickson, I., "Web Storage", World Wide Web Consortium
Recommendation REC-webstorage-20130730, July 2013,
<http://www.w3.org/TR/2013/REC-webstorage-20130730>.
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Appendix A. (Informative) Applicability of Features for Each Message
This section provides a cross-reference table showing the
applicability of the features provided in this specification to each
kind of response described in Section 2.1. The table provided in
this section is for informative purposes only.
+-------------------+-------+----------+-----------+------+
| | init. | success. | intermed. | neg. |
+-------------------+-------+----------+-----------+------+
| Optional auth. | O | n | N | N |
| auth-style | O | - | - | O |
| loc.-when-unauth. | O | I | I | i |
| no-auth | O | I | I | i |
| loc.-when-logout | - | O | - | - |
| logout-timeout | - | O | - | - |
| username | O | - | - | O |
+-------------------+-------+----------+-----------+------+
Legends:
O = MAY contain; n = SHOULD NOT contain; N = MUST NOT contain
i = SHOULD be ignored; I = MUST be ignored;
- = meaningless (to be ignored)
Authors' Addresses
Yutaka Oiwa
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Information Technology Research Institute
Tsukuba Central 1
1-1-1 Umezono
Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki
Japan
Email: y.oiwa@aist.go.jp
Hajime Watanabe
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Information Technology Research Institute
Tsukuba Central 1
1-1-1 Umezono
Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki
Japan
Email: h-watanabe@aist.go.jp
Oiwa, et al. Experimental PAGE 27
RFC 8053 HTTP Auth. Ext. for Interactive Clients January 2017
Hiromitsu Takagi
National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology
Information Technology Research Institute
Tsukuba Central 1
1-1-1 Umezono
Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki
Japan
Email: takagi.hiromitsu@aist.go.jp
Kaoru Maeda
Lepidum Co. Ltd.
Village Sasazuka 3, Suite #602
1-30-3 Sasazuka
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Japan
Email: maeda@lepidum.co.jp
Tatsuya Hayashi
Lepidum Co. Ltd.
Village Sasazuka 3, Suite #602
1-30-3 Sasazuka
Shibuya-ku, Tokyo
Japan
Email: hayashi@lepidum.co.jp
Yuichi Ioku
Individual Contributor
Email: mutual-work@ioku.org
Oiwa, et al. Experimental PAGE 28
RFC TOTAL SIZE: 62530 bytes
PUBLICATION DATE: Thursday, January 26th, 2017
LEGAL RIGHTS: The IETF Trust (see BCP 78)
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