On Apr 30, 2012, at 9:11 PM, Will Chan <[email protected]> wrote:
> The parameter for password is simply just used to pass information from the
> client to CS. It's really up to the AuthenticatorAdapter to decide how it
> should use the parameter. Since by default, MD5 hashed password is being
> passed in, the default adapter is just doing a simple comparison againt the
> DB. If suddenly the admin wishes to use the LDAPAuthenticator, he should
> require that the password to be in plain-text (assuming that is what is used
> to compare against). We don't need need two parameters for this. You can
> also imagine someone wanting SHA-256, etc. for their password encryption.
> The only way I can think having two separate parameters is if there is a
> use-case for using multiple adapters, each requiring their own parameter but
> I really doubt this would ever be used. It would mean two different auth DB.
>
> Will
>
> ________________________________________
>
So let me point out a practical example where this fails. Cumulus, the android
client to CloudStack, the login command to get a token and use session based
auth initially. The endpoint could be any CloudStack deployment, and the end
user may not know whether or not the operator is using native auth or an
external service. They take in username and password from the user, do they md5
the password or not? How can they tell what they should be passing? (same
problem with multiple parameters unless we accept all and only use one). And
there are plenty of possible apps that would behave in this manner.
--David
