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- <?xml version="1.0"?>
- <!DOCTYPE modulesynopsis SYSTEM "../style/modulesynopsis.dtd">
- <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="../style/manual.en.xsl"?>
- <!-- $Revision: 1.5.2.11 $ -->
-
- <!--
- Copyright 2002-2004 The Apache Software Foundation
-
- Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
- you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
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- http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
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- distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
- WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
- See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
- limitations under the License.
- -->
-
- <modulesynopsis metafile="mod_auth_digest.xml.meta">
-
- <name>mod_auth_digest</name>
- <description>User authentication using MD5
- Digest Authentication.</description>
- <status>Experimental</status>
- <sourcefile>mod_auth_digest.c</sourcefile>
- <identifier>auth_digest_module</identifier>
-
- <summary>
- <p>This module implements HTTP Digest Authentication. However, it
- has not been extensively tested and is therefore marked
- experimental.</p>
- </summary>
-
- <seealso><directive module="core">AuthName</directive></seealso>
- <seealso><directive module="core">AuthType</directive></seealso>
- <seealso><directive module="core">Require</directive></seealso>
- <seealso><directive module="core">Satisfy</directive></seealso>
-
- <section id="using"><title>Using Digest Authentication</title>
-
- <p>Using MD5 Digest authentication is very simple. Simply set
- up authentication normally, using <code>AuthType Digest</code> and
- <directive module="mod_auth_digest">AuthDigestFile</directive> instead
- of the normal <code>AuthType Basic</code> and <directive
- module="mod_auth">AuthUserFile</directive>; also, replace any <directive
- module="mod_auth">AuthGroupFile</directive> with <directive
- module="mod_auth_digest">AuthDigestGroupFile</directive>. Then add a
- <directive module="mod_auth_digest">AuthDigestDomain</directive> directive
- containing at least the root URI(s) for this protection space.</p>
-
- <p>Appropriate user (text) files can be created using the
- <a href="../programs/htdigest.html">htdigest</a> tool.</p>
-
- <example><title>Example:</title>
- <Location /private/><br />
- <indent>
- AuthType Digest<br />
- AuthName "private area"<br />
- AuthDigestDomain /private/ http://mirror.my.dom/private2/<br />
- AuthDigestFile /web/auth/.digest_pw<br />
- Require valid-user<br />
- </indent>
- </Location>
- </example>
-
- <note><title>Note</title>
- <p>Digest authentication provides a more secure password system
- than Basic authentication, but only works with supporting
- browsers. As of November 2002, the major browsers that support digest
- authentication are <a href="http://www.opera.com/">Opera</a>, <a
- href="http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/">MS Internet
- Explorer</a> (fails when used with a query string - see "<a href="#msie"
- >Working with MS Internet Explorer</a>" below for a workaround), <a
- href="http://www.w3.org/Amaya/">Amaya</a>, <a
- href="http://www.mozilla.org">Mozilla</a> and <a
- href="http://channels.netscape.com/ns/browsers/download.jsp"
- >Netscape</a> since version 7. Since digest authentication is not
- as widely implemented as basic authentication, you should use it only
- in controlled environments.</p>
- </note>
- </section>
-
- <section id="msie"><title>Working with MS Internet Explorer</title>
- <p>The Digest authentication implementation in current Internet
- Explorer implementations has known issues, namely that <code>GET</code>
- requests with a query string are not RFC compliant. There are a
- few ways to work around this issue.</p>
-
- <p>
- The first way is to use <code>POST</code> requests instead of
- <code>GET</code> requests to pass data to your program. This method
- is the simplest approach if your application can work with this
- limitation.
- </p>
-
- <p>Since version 2.0.51 Apache also provides a workaround in the
- <code>AuthDigestEnableQueryStringHack</code> environment variable.
- If <code>AuthDigestEnableQueryStringHack</code> is set for the
- request, Apache will take steps to work around the MSIE bug and
- remove the request URI from the digest comparison. Using this
- method would look similar to the following.</p>
-
- <example><title>Using Digest Authentication with MSIE:</title>
- BrowserMatch "MSIE" AuthDigestEnableQueryStringHack=On
- </example>
-
- <p>See the <directive module="mod_setenvif">BrowserMatch</directive>
- directive for more details on conditionally setting environment
- variables</p>
- </section>
-
-
- <directivesynopsis>
- <name>AuthDigestFile</name>
- <description>Location of the text file containing the list
- of users and encoded passwords for digest authentication</description>
- <syntax>AuthDigestFile <var>file-path</var></syntax>
- <contextlist><context>directory</context><context>.htaccess</context>
- </contextlist>
- <override>AuthConfig</override>
-
- <usage>
- <p>The <directive>AuthDigestFile</directive> directive sets the
- name of a textual file containing the list of users and encoded
- passwords for digest authentication. <var>File-path</var> is the
- absolute path to the user file.</p>
-
- <p>The digest file uses a special format. Files in this format
- can be created using the <a
- href="../programs/htdigest.html">htdigest</a> utility found in
- the <code>support/</code> subdirectory of the Apache distribution.</p>
- </usage>
- </directivesynopsis>
-
- <directivesynopsis>
- <name>AuthDigestGroupFile</name>
- <description>Name of the text file containing the list of groups
- for digest authentication</description>
- <syntax>AuthDigestGroupFile <var>file-path</var></syntax>
- <contextlist><context>directory</context><context>.htaccess</context>
- </contextlist>
- <override>AuthConfig</override>
-
- <usage>
- <p>The <directive>AuthDigestGroupFile</directive> directive sets
- the name of a textual file containing the list of groups and their
- members (user names). <var>File-path</var> is the absolute path to
- the group file.</p>
-
- <p>Each line of the group file contains a groupname followed by
- a colon, followed by the member usernames separated by spaces.
- Example:</p>
-
- <example>mygroup: bob joe anne</example>
-
- <p>Note that searching large text files is <em>very</em>
- inefficient.</p>
-
- <note type="warning"><title>Security:</title>
- <p>Make sure that the <directive>AuthGroupFile</directive> is stored
- outside the document tree of the web-server; do <em>not</em> put it in
- the directory that it protects. Otherwise, clients may be able
- to download the <directive>AuthGroupFile</directive>.</p>
- </note>
- </usage>
- </directivesynopsis>
-
- <directivesynopsis>
- <name>AuthDigestQop</name>
- <description>Determines the quality-of-protection to use in digest
- authentication</description>
- <syntax>AuthDigestQop none|auth|auth-int [auth|auth-int]</syntax>
- <default>AuthDigestQop auth</default>
- <contextlist><context>directory</context><context>.htaccess</context>
- </contextlist>
- <override>AuthConfig</override>
-
- <usage>
- <p>The <directive>AuthDigestQop</directive> directive determines
- the <dfn>quality-of-protection</dfn> to use. <code>auth</code> will only do
- authentication (username/password); <code>auth-int</code> is
- authentication plus integrity checking (an MD5 hash of the entity
- is also computed and checked); <code>none</code> will cause the module
- to use the old RFC-2069 digest algorithm (which does not include
- integrity checking). Both <code>auth</code> and <code>auth-int</code> may
- be specified, in which the case the browser will choose which of
- these to use. <code>none</code> should only be used if the browser for
- some reason does not like the challenge it receives otherwise.</p>
-
- <note>
- <code>auth-int</code> is not implemented yet.
- </note>
- </usage>
- </directivesynopsis>
-
- <directivesynopsis>
- <name>AuthDigestNonceLifetime</name>
- <description>How long the server nonce is valid</description>
- <syntax>AuthDigestNonceLifetime <var>seconds</var></syntax>
- <default>AuthDigestNonceLifetime 300</default>
- <contextlist><context>directory</context><context>.htaccess</context>
- </contextlist>
- <override>AuthConfig</override>
-
- <usage>
- <p>The <directive>AuthDigestNonceLifetime</directive> directive
- controls how long the server nonce is valid. When the client
- contacts the server using an expired nonce the server will send
- back a 401 with <code>stale=true</code>. If <var>seconds</var> is
- greater than 0 then it specifies the amount of time for which the
- nonce is valid; this should probably never be set to less than 10
- seconds. If <var>seconds</var> is less than 0 then the nonce never
- expires. <!-- Not implemented yet: If <var>seconds</var> is 0 then
- the nonce may be used exactly once by the client. Note that while
- one-time-nonces provide higher security against replay attacks,
- they also have significant performance implications, as the
- browser cannot pipeline or multiple connections for the
- requests. Because browsers cannot easily detect that
- one-time-nonces are being used, this may lead to browsers trying
- to pipeline requests and receiving 401 responses for all but the
- first request, requiring the browser to resend the requests. Note
- also that the protection against reply attacks only makes sense
- for dynamically generated content and things like POST requests;
- for static content the attacker may already have the complete
- response, so one-time-nonces do not make sense here. -->
- </p>
- </usage>
- </directivesynopsis>
-
- <directivesynopsis>
- <name>AuthDigestNonceFormat</name>
- <description>Determines how the nonce is generated</description>
- <syntax>AuthDigestNonceFormat <var>format</var></syntax>
- <contextlist><context>directory</context><context>.htaccess</context>
- </contextlist>
- <override>AuthConfig</override>
-
- <usage>
- <note>Not implemented yet.</note>
- <!-- The AuthDigestNonceFormat directive determines how the nonce is
- generated. -->
- </usage>
- </directivesynopsis>
-
- <directivesynopsis>
- <name>AuthDigestNcCheck</name>
- <description>Enables or disables checking of the nonce-count sent by the
- server</description>
- <syntax>AuthDigestNcCheck On|Off</syntax>
- <default>AuthDigestNcCheck Off</default>
- <contextlist><context>server config</context></contextlist>
-
- <usage>
- <note>
- Not implemented yet.
- </note>
- <!--
- <p>The AuthDigestNcCheck directive enables or disables the checking of the
- nonce-count sent by the server.</p>
-
- <p>While recommended from a security standpoint, turning this directive
- On has one important performance implication. To check the nonce-count
- *all* requests (which have an Authorization header, irrespective of
- whether they require digest authentication) must be serialized through
- a critical section. If the server is handling a large number of
- requests which contain the Authorization header then this may noticeably
- impact performance.</p>
- -->
- </usage>
- </directivesynopsis>
-
- <directivesynopsis>
- <name>AuthDigestAlgorithm</name>
- <description>Selects the algorithm used to calculate the challenge and
- response hases in digest authentication</description>
- <syntax>AuthDigestAlgorithm MD5|MD5-sess</syntax>
- <default>AuthDigestAlgorithm MD5</default>
- <contextlist><context>directory</context><context>.htaccess</context>
- </contextlist>
- <override>AuthConfig</override>
-
- <usage>
- <p>The <directive>AuthDigestAlgorithm</directive> directive
- selects the algorithm used to calculate the challenge and response
- hashes.</p>
-
- <note>
- <code>MD5-sess</code> is not correctly implemented yet.
- </note>
- <!--
- <p>To use <code>MD5-sess</code> you must first code up the
- <code>get_userpw_hash()</code> function in
- <code>mod_auth_digest.c</code>.</p>
- -->
- </usage>
- </directivesynopsis>
-
- <directivesynopsis>
- <name>AuthDigestDomain</name>
- <description>URIs that are in the same protection space for digest
- authentication</description>
- <syntax>AuthDigestDomain <var>URI</var> [<var>URI</var>] ...</syntax>
- <contextlist><context>directory</context><context>.htaccess</context>
- </contextlist>
- <override>AuthConfig</override>
-
- <usage>
- <p>The <directive>AuthDigestDomain</directive> directive allows
- you to specify one or more URIs which are in the same protection
- space (<em>i.e.</em> use the same realm and username/password info).
- The specified URIs are prefixes, <em>i.e.</em> the client will assume
- that all URIs "below" these are also protected by the same
- username/password. The URIs may be either absolute URIs (<em>i.e.</em>
- inluding a scheme, host, port, etc) or relative URIs.</p>
-
- <p>This directive <em>should</em> always be specified and
- contain at least the (set of) root URI(s) for this space.
- Omitting to do so will cause the client to send the
- Authorization header for <em>every request</em> sent to this
- server. Apart from increasing the size of the request, it may
- also have a detrimental effect on performance if <directive
- module="mod_auth_digest">AuthDigestNcCheck</directive> is on.</p>
-
- <p>The URIs specified can also point to different servers, in
- which case clients (which understand this) will then share
- username/password info across multiple servers without
- prompting the user each time.</p>
- </usage>
- </directivesynopsis>
-
- <directivesynopsis>
- <name>AuthDigestShmemSize</name>
- <description>The amount of shared memory to allocate for keeping track
- of clients</description>
- <syntax>AuthDigestShmemSize <var>size</var></syntax>
- <default>AuthDigestShmemSize 1000</default>
- <contextlist><context>server config</context></contextlist>
-
- <usage>
- <p>The <directive>AuthDigestShmemSize</directive> directive defines
- the amount of shared memory, that will be allocated at the server
- startup for keeping track of clients. Note that the shared memory
- segment cannot be set less than the space that is neccessary for
- tracking at least <em>one</em> client. This value is dependant on your
- system. If you want to find out the exact value, you may simply
- set <directive>AuthDigestShmemSize</directive> to the value of
- <code>0</code> and read the error message after trying to start the
- server.</p>
-
- <p>The <var>size</var> is normally expressed in Bytes, but you
- may let the number follow a <code>K</code> or an <code>M</code> to
- express your value as KBytes or MBytes. For example, the following
- directives are all equivalent:</p>
-
- <example>
- AuthDigestShmemSize 1048576<br />
- AuthDigestShmemSize 1024K<br />
- AuthDigestShmemSize 1M
- </example>
- </usage>
- </directivesynopsis>
-
- </modulesynopsis>
-