Re: [hybi] About authentication mechanism

[Greg Wilkins <[e-mail]>]

On 21 June 2011 23:43, Iñaki Baz Castillo <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Hi, any comment about this please? IMHO this topic is important. If
> I'm wrong I would like to know it :)

In many respects, this is a thread that should probably occur within
the W3C and WHATWG lists, as how browsers handle credential collection
is much more of an issue for them than the IETF..   Note that I think
they are in final call on their APIs as well.

It is true that the current version of the draft no longer denies the
ability of a client to handle 401 responses, so that is perhaps all
that we need.     However it might be that we should consider if we
recommend support for BASIC and DIGEST.

cheers







>
> 2011/6/20 Iñaki Baz Castillo <[e-mail]>:
>> Hi, I would like to start a new thread for this topic as it seems that
>> the draft does not cover it at all (just suggests that an HTTP
>> response code other than 101 should be threated as RFC 2616 states:
>>
>>
>>  "1.  If the status code received from the server is not 101, the
>>        client handles the response per HTTP procedures." (p. 30)
>>
>>
>> The question is: should the browser prompt the human user for
>> user/pass as when a 401 is received in the WS handshake attemp?
>>
>> Imagine this case:
>>
>> - www.domain.org => 1.1.1.1:80
>>
>> - ws.domain.org => 1.1.1.2:443
>>
>> - I open http://www.domain.org in my browser, fill some login form and
>> retrieve websocket connection data, including an user and pass (for
>> Digest).
>>
>> - My JavaScript is then provisioned (via JavaScript WebSocket API
>> ????) with ws connection data: server ip, port, Digest user/passwd.
>>
>> - My web browser starts the ws connection with ws.domain.org:443. It
>> receives 401 with Digest (so I need a nonce from the server before
>> using my user/passwd).
>>
>> - JavaScript code automatically accepts the Digest chanllenge,
>> generates a Digest response with the provided user/passwd and the
>> retrieved Digest nonce, and re-send the HTTP GET request (all of this
>> without prompting the user) with the Authorization header.
>>
>> - If the JavaScript code would not be proviosioned with user/pass,
>> then upon receipt of the 401 it should prompt the user (like a
>> JavaScript alert?).
>>
>>
>>
>> So, if all this stuff is not clearly specified (and I think passing
>> user/pass to the JavaScript WebSocket connection API does not exist)
>> then using HTTP Digest (or Basic) will be not useful or feasible, and
>> I expect than using cookies and all that "pure just-web stuff" will be
>> the only way. Please, take into account that a websocket server could
>> run in a separate server, so using cookies mechanism is not so
>> feasible (it could or not depending the case). Neither I think that
>> cookies (a workaround to simulate
>> sessions in HTTP protocol) are the best way to go.
>>
>> IMHO the draft should do much more effort in authentication process.
>> Please don't let the door open to ugly and/or propietary
>> authentication solutions.
>>
>>
>> My proposal is that the JavaScript WebSocket API should include a
>> method to pass authentication 'user' and 'password' (and optionally
>> 'realm' so it would ignore the realm para in the 401 response when
>> using Digest rather than Basic auth).
>>
>> In this way, I could open a webpage, perform usual login (maybe via a
>> HTML form as commonly extended) and then retrieve WS connection data
>> (WS URI), including user/pass/[realm].
>> So my JavaScript client would open a WS connection with the given
>> destination and in case of receiving a 401 it would re-send the HTTP
>> GET request with the appropriate Authorization header without
>> prompting the user.
>>
>> This wouldn't be the only authentication mechanism, of course, but
>> IMHO it should be documented (and covered by the JS WebSocket API).
>>
>> Regards.
>>
>> --
>> Iñaki Baz Castillo
>> <[e-mail]>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Iñaki Baz Castillo
> <[e-mail]>
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