1 Introduction

This specification describes optional fields and behaviors of the Digest Access Authentication: Microsoft Extensions and how to support clients and servers that exhibit nonconforming behavior to [RFC2617] and [RFC2831].

Digest authentication supports client authentication to servers (based on the user's name and password) and server authentication to the client.

Higher-Layer protocols such as Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) ([RFC2251]) employ digest authentication as an SASL mechanism.

Sections 1.5, 1.8, 1.9, 2, and 3 of this specification are normative. All other sections and examples in this specification are informative.