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Atom Authentication (for reference)
2007-09-20 05:21 pmXML.com: Atom Authentication
It does have a number of drawbacks. It requires the server to know the password rather than a hash of it; that's a problem (though easily fixed). WSSE authentication, which this is based on, may or may not be supported by browsers, though it's certainly easy enough to implement in clients. It's also not at all clear how closely related this is to any current version of Atom; it's dated 2003.
I wish I didn't need to write this article. My life would be much simpler if Atom could just use existing HTTP authentication, as-is. But it can't; I'm going to tell you why and then I'm going to tell you what we're doing instead.It's a simple, secure authentication technique that works when talking to CGI scripts hanging off of servers you don't control, which is convenient sometimes.
It does have a number of drawbacks. It requires the server to know the password rather than a hash of it; that's a problem (though easily fixed). WSSE authentication, which this is based on, may or may not be supported by browsers, though it's certainly easy enough to implement in clients. It's also not at all clear how closely related this is to any current version of Atom; it's dated 2003.
