On Fri, Mar 25, 2011 at 12:19 PM, Neil Kandalgaonkar
<[email protected]> wrote:
> I added a comment to the talk page.
>
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_talk:Akshay.agarwal
>
> Long story short, we had this discussion in IRC... some people find the
> concept of AJAX login really alarming from a security perspective, but I
> think there could (COULD) be some ways to compromise there. There is a
> little-used concept called Digest Authentication that we could implement
> in Javascript.
>

I don't find the concept alarming. The concept of AJAX login is
perfectly fine, when used on a full https site, or a full http site.

It is insecure when used on an http page where the login page is using
https. If there is a man in the middle, the form can be rewritten to
send the username/password to the attacker, who then relays the
information to the wiki. I don't see how digest authentication will
solve this. Digest authentication protects against replay attacks, but
I don't believe it can protect against man in the middle attacks.

Respectfully,

Ryan Lane

_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Reply via email to