Re: [http-auth] Last Call: <draft-ietf-httpauth-basicauth-update-05.txt> (The 'Basic' HTTP Authentication Scheme) to Proposed Standard

[Bjoern Hoehrmann <[e-mail]>]

* Julian Reschke wrote:
>On 2015-02-05 23:49, Bjoern Hoehrmann wrote:
>> * The IESG wrote:
>>> Abstract
>>>
>>>    This document defines the "Basic" Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
>>>    Authentication Scheme, which transmits credentials as userid/password
>>>    pairs, obfuscated by the use of Base64 encoding.
>>
>> I do not think the use of Base64 is intended as obfuscation and it seems
>> misleading to me to describe it as such. (The Introduction has the same
>> problem).
>
>I think it was.

I would take it to mean, in this context, "make difficult to decode",
while it's more likely used to "deal with special characters". In any
case, if the idea is to note that Base64 is easily reversible, say that
instead of "obfuscated".

>> In the Introduction:
>>
>>     The "Basic" scheme previously was defined in Section 2 of [RFC2617].
>>     This document updates the definition, and also addresses
>>     internationalization issues by introducing the "charset"
>>     authentication parameter (Section 2.1).
>>
>> I think "updates" is the wrong word considering the document is intended
>> to "obsolete" RFC 2617.
>
>It does update the definition, no? Also: "Other documents updating RFC 
>2617 are "Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP/1.1): Authentication" 
>([RFC7235], defining the authentication framework) and "HTTP Digest 
>Access Authentication" ([DIGEST], updating the definition of the 
>'"Digest" authentication scheme). Taken together, these three documents 
>obsolete RFC 2617."

A better word would be "replaces".

>That is true.
>
>>     The original definition of this authentication scheme failed to
>>     specify the character encoding scheme used to convert the user-pass
>>     into an octet sequence.
>>
>> I think it would be more appropriate to say that it did not do so. That
>> wasn't a particular "failure", sending unlabeled 8bit (and 7bit) content
>> was normal at the time, in part because other system parts also did not
>> know or care about character encodings.
>
>It's a defect in that specification, no matter when it was written.

Regardless, I think "did not" would be better than "failed to".
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