Moving DIGEST-MD5 to Historic
RFC 6331
Document | Type |
RFC - Informational
(July 2011; No errata)
Obsoletes RFC 2831
|
|
---|---|---|---|
Last updated | 2015-10-14 | ||
Replaces | draft-ietf-sasl-digest-to-historic | ||
Stream | IETF | ||
Formats | plain text pdf html bibtex | ||
Stream | WG state | WG Document | |
Document shepherd | No shepherd assigned | ||
IESG | IESG state | RFC 6331 (Informational) | |
Consensus Boilerplate | Unknown | ||
Telechat date | |||
Responsible AD | Stephen Farrell | ||
IESG note | Tom Yu (tlyu@mit.edu) is the document shepherd. | ||
Send notices to | (None) |
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) A. Melnikov Request for Comments: 6331 Isode Limited Obsoletes: 2831 July 2011 Category: Informational ISSN: 2070-1721 Moving DIGEST-MD5 to Historic Abstract This memo describes problems with the DIGEST-MD5 Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) mechanism as specified in RFC 2831. It marks DIGEST-MD5 as OBSOLETE in the IANA Registry of SASL mechanisms and moves RFC 2831 to Historic status. Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. 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 5741. 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/rfc6331. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2011 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. Melnikov Informational [Page 1] RFC 6331 Moving DIGEST-MD5 to Historic July 2011 This document may contain material from IETF Documents or IETF Contributions published or made publicly available before November 10, 2008. The person(s) controlling the copyright in some of this material may not have granted the IETF Trust the right to allow modifications of such material outside the IETF Standards Process. Without obtaining an adequate license from the person(s) controlling the copyright in such materials, this document may not be modified outside the IETF Standards Process, and derivative works of it may not be created outside the IETF Standards Process, except to format it for publication as an RFC or to translate it into languages other than English. Table of Contents 1. Introduction and Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 2. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 3. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 4. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 5.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1. Introduction and Overview [RFC2831] defines how HTTP Digest Authentication [RFC2617] can be used as a Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) [RFC4422] mechanism for any protocol that has a SASL profile. It was intended both as an improvement over CRAM-MD5 [RFC2195] and as a convenient way to support a single authentication mechanism for web, email, the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), and other protocols. While it can be argued that it is an improvement over CRAM-MD5, many implementors commented that the additional complexity of DIGEST-MD5 makes it difficult to implement fully and securely. Below is an incomplete list of problems with the DIGEST-MD5 mechanism as specified in [RFC2831]: 1. The mechanism has too many options and modes. Some of them are not well described and are not widely implemented. For example, DIGEST-MD5 allows the "qop" directive to contain multiple values, but it also allows for multiple qop directives to be specified. The handling of multiple options is not specified, which results in minor interoperability problems. Some implementations amalgamate multiple qop values into one, while others treat multiple qops as an error. Another example is the use of an empty authorization identity. In SASL, an empty authorization identity means that the client is willing to authorize as the authentication identity. The document is not clear on whether Melnikov Informational [Page 2] RFC 6331 Moving DIGEST-MD5 to Historic July 2011Show full document text