HTTP Basic Auth: Simple but Insecure Access Control
HTTP Basic Auth is a simple gatekeeper for your API, prompting users for a username and password directly in the browser. It's useful for internal tools, but never use it over unencrypted HTTP as credentials are sent in a trivially decodable format.
HTTP Basic Auth is a simple gatekeeper for your API. The server challenges with a 401 status, prompting the browser to show a login box. Credentials are then sent in a header. It's suitable for internal tools or demos, not for sensitive public-facing apps. The main footgun is its insecurity over plain HTTP, as credentials are only Base64 encoded. A subtler risk is timing attacks, where response time differences can leak information during credential validation.
Read the original → fastapi.tiangolo.com
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