The most basic form of Web-based user authentication is known as Basic Authentication. This is an amazingly simple and very old protocol (well, in Web years, anyway) which doesn't rely on any of the fancy encryption, cookies, checksums, or much of anything else that currently exists.. . .

The most basic form of Web-based user authentication is known as Basic Authentication. This is an amazingly simple and very old protocol (well, in Web years, anyway) which doesn't rely on any of the fancy encryption, cookies, checksums, or much of anything else that currently exists.

When your browser requests a secure document, the server looks to see if the request contains a username and password to authenticate you. If not, it responds with an HTTP 401 response code. Your browser then displays a dialog box asking for a username and password.

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