Can you pass user/pass for HTTP Basic Authentication in URL parameters?

Question

I believe this is not possible, but someone I know insisted that it works. I don't even know what parameters to try, and I haven't found this documented anywhere.

I tried http://myserver.com/~user=username&password=mypassword but it doesn't work.

Can you confirm that it's not in fact possible to pass the user/pass via HTTP parameters (GET or POST)?

Solution 1

It is indeed not possible to pass the username and password via query parameters in standard HTTP auth. Instead, you use a special URL format, like this: http://username:[email protected]/ -- this sends the credentials in the standard HTTP "Authorization" header.

It's possible that whoever you were speaking to was thinking of a custom module or code that looked at the query parameters and verified the credentials. This isn't standard HTTP auth, though, it's an application-specific thing.

Solution 2

http://username:[email protected] will works for FireFox, Chrome, Safari BUT not for IE.

Microsoft Knowledge Base

Solution 3

Passing Basic authentication parameters in URL not recommended

There is an Authorization header field for this purpose check it here: http header list

How to use it is written here: Basic access authentication

There you can also read that although it is still supported by some browsers the suggested solution of adding the Basic authorization credentials in the url is not recommended.

Read also chapter 4.1 in RFC 2617 - HTTP Authentication for more details on why NOT to use Basic Authentication.

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Passing authentication parameters in query string

When using OAuth or other authentication services you can often also send your access token in a query string instead of in an authorization header, so something like:

GET https://www.example.com/api/v1/users/1?access_token=1234567890abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCD

Comments

[Admin]

@sam - what? How would the complete URL look like?

[Admin]

All in the spec ietf.org/rfc/rfc1738.txt (3.1)

[Admin]

@sam - Sorry, I just failed to parse your comment for some reason.

[Craig Vermeer]

Thanks, this is just what I was looking for ... it's not critical that it's GET parameters, just that I can craft it into the URL.

[Moshe Katz]

This capability was removed from Chrome 19+. See code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=123150

[Hendrik]

Nice. Make sure to also encode your password in case it has special characters. Just open your browser's console encode("my&password&"). Returns you the encoded string to use after the username

[womble]

By my reading of that bug report, it got added back into Chrome 20. Certainly, I'd expect to see a lot of continued complaining about it if it hadn't been.

[womble]

And how does one go about encoding an Authorization header into a URL?

[womble]

Isn't that the form you stated was now deprecated?

[womble]

The question you answered with "There is an Authorization header field for this purpose" was asking how to put authentication parameters into the URL. If you can't encode HTTP header fields into a URL (which you can't), your answer is a non sequitur.

[SimonSimCity]

I now requested it for Internet Explorer: connect.microsoft.com/IE/feedback/details/873575/…. Slightly different use-case, but addresses the same issue ;)

[T.J. Crowder]

FYI, the http://username:[email protected] format is no longer supported by either IE or Chrome, wouldn't be surprised if others followed suit if they haven't already.

[Damien Overeem ツ]

Actually works fine in Chrome. Only IE is being a spoiled brat.

[Chris DaMour]

@DamienOvereem what version of chrome you on? i'm on mac os x 37 and it does not seem to work for me

[Damien Overeem ツ]

I have since learned that Chrome had it disabled for a time, but re-enabled this feature later. I've also learned that Safari will throw phishing errors when running into these types of links.. Basically the time of url-based http authentication is over..

[chicks]

Basic http auth is a pain, but since it is easy to setup it is unlikely to ever be completely eliminated. Even http 2.0 includes rfc7235 with no mention of deprecation.

[C.Samper]

@womble but if password contains '@' then it doesn't work. it gives fatal error, can anyone tell me how we can give username & password at once.

[C.Samper]

@Diago if password contains '@' then it doesn't work. it gives fatal error, can anyone tell me how we can give username & password at once

[David Moles]

@AshishJain -- I would try escaping the @ in the password as %40. (I don't know if that works, though, and it might depend on the server or browser/server combination.)

[Wilt]

@LieRyan Apparently someone altered the page since it is not written there any more. I tried to do some googling but nothing showed up so I altered the title also to "not recommended". But if you read chapter 4.1 in RFC 2617 - HTTP Authentication then I can imagine why it is not recommended.

[Lie Ryan]

@Wilt: I have to apologise, you are indeed correct. Your hint that the spec was "altered" instigated me to investigate further (an RFC is never modified once it's published/numbered). I just found that RFC 2396 has actually been superseded by RFC 3986, which I wasn't able to find earlier. RFC 3986 does mention the deprecation of username:password syntax: Use of the format "user:password" in the userinfo field is deprecated.

[user38537]

Doesn't work in linux lynx either.

[Ankita]

@womble : Is it possible to get credentials in HTTPOST request?

[Marco Roy]

Note that not all clients (browsers, curl, etc) will convert those credentials into the standard HTTP "Authorization" header. I'm dealing with an issue where I must retrieve the credentials from the URL rather than the header: stackoverflow.com/questions/41728885

[Nathan Basanese]

// , Girish, I like the brevity. Would you mind explaining why this works?

[frandevel]

This does not work any more in most browsers: Subresource requests whose URLs contain embedded credentials (e.g. user:pass@host`) are blocked ... is the message you will get when trying that

[rraallvv]

Is the password transmitted over HTTP as plain text?

[Rich]

@AshishJain @ in the password field can be escaped as %40. The literal @ is the delimiter.

[Rich]

@rraallvv Yes, HTTP is a plaintext protocol. It was designed to be the same as FTP (and gopher, right?)

[Jérôme]

January 2019, this still works in Firefox.

[Alex]

It may still work but I wouldn't use it for anything other than testing: tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986 - Use of the format "user:password" in the userinfo field is deprecated.

[Magnus]

As of 2019-12-02 this works in Chrome for me but not in Safari.

[sootsnoot]

A lot of time has passed, but it now seems that embedding username:password@ works fine in top-level url's (i.e. not for sub-resources) with current versions of Chrome and Firefox, but not Safari (at least on an iPhone). Looking at the original RFC 2671 (dated June 1999) chapter 4.1, the only real criticism is that the username and password are passed in clear text. But these days most connections use https, in which case the credentials are encrypted. And with free SSL certificates easily available through letsencrypt.org, there is no reason not to use https . So the criticism is nil.

[MrWhite]

"IE, which no longer support basic authentication." - You mean the passing of user credentials in the userinfo part of the URL. IE still supports "[HTTP] basic authentication". And your example URL should be: http://username:[email protected]/.

[Nir Alfasi]

May 2020 - it doesn't work in FF, Safari or Chrome on MacOS

[ynn]

In July 2020, on Arch Linux, that doesn't work in Chromium but works in Firefox. On Android, that works both in Firefox and Chrome.