Digest access authentication is one of the agreed-upon methods a web server can use to negotiate credentials with a user's web browser. It applies a hash function to a password before sending it over the network, which is safer than basic access authentication, which sends plaintext.
Technically, digest authentication is an application of MD5 cryptographic hashing with usage of nonce values to discourage cryptanalysis. It uses the HTTP protocol.
Read more about Digest Access Authentication: Overview, Impact of MD5 Security On Digest Authentication, Example With Explanation, SIP Digest Authentication, Browser Implementation
Famous quotes containing the words digest and/or access:
“The eating of a MacDonald’s meal is like the reading of Reader’s Digest—small, easily digested, carefully processed, carefully cut down, abridged. Reader’s Digest gives us knowledge that is easily compartmentalized, simplified, ideologically sound.”
—Clive Bloom, British educator. “MacDonald’s Man Meets Reader’s Digest,” Readings in Popular Culture: Trivial Pursuits?, St. Martin’s Press (1990)
“In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves.”
—Saul Bellow (b. 1915)