Ocamlnet 4 Reference Manual : Netmech_crammd5_sasl

# Module Netmech_crammd5_sasl

    module Netmech_crammd5_sasl: sig .. end

The CRAM-MD5 SASL mechanism (RFC 2195), which is obsolete and only provided for completeness.

Key facts:

- The password is checked with a challenge-response mechanism, and does not appear in the clear.
- The mechanism is vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.
- The client does not authenticate the server in any way.
- The hash function MD5 counts as broken.
- There is no support for channel binding within the mechanism.
- There is no support for authorization names.
- The mechanism provides at best medium security, and should only be used over channels that are otherwise secured.

This implementation checks whether the server receives user names and passwords in UTF-8 encoding. Note that the mechanism predates the widespread use of Unicode, so this may cause interoperability issues with old implementations.

Parameters:

- Both `create_client_session` and `create_server_session` accept the boolean parameter "mutual". If true, however, authentication fails immediately, as mutual authentication cannot be supported.
- The boolean parameter "secure" is ignored (i.e. we regard this mechanism as secure)

As for all SASL mechanisms in OCamlnet, SASLprep is not automatically called. Users of CRAM-MD5 should pass user names and passwords through `Netsaslprep.saslprep`.

    module CRAM_MD5: Netsys_sasl_types.SASL_MECHANISM

The CRAM-MD5 SASL mechanism (RFC 2195), which is obsolete and only provided for completeness.