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
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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
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