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Posted to dev@hc.apache.org by "Trejkaz (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org> on 2015/01/29 01:42:35 UTC

[jira] [Commented] (HTTPCLIENT-1106) Use character arrays for passwords in Credentials objects, not Strings

    [ https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HTTPCLIENT-1106?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=14296160#comment-14296160 ] 

Trejkaz commented on HTTPCLIENT-1106:
-------------------------------------

+1. All the work we do to protect the user's credentials is for nothing because of APIs which force us to wrap it in a string.

> Credentials need to be stored in memory for a duration of an HTTP session

Not necessarily. If you're using Digest auth, then you need only keep around a hash of the password and other information for that session. This is vaguely similar to keeping a password in memory, but at least an attacker can't steal it to impersonate the user on a different web server.


> Use character arrays for passwords in Credentials objects, not Strings
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: HTTPCLIENT-1106
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HTTPCLIENT-1106
>             Project: HttpComponents HttpClient
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>          Components: HttpAuth
>    Affects Versions: 4.1.1
>            Reporter: John Karp
>             Fix For: Future
>
>
> Its fairly conventional to use char[] to represent passwords in Java, because using Strings can present security issues:
> http://securesoftware.blogspot.com/2009/01/java-security-why-not-to-use-string.html
> http://download.oracle.com/javase/1.5.0/docs/guide/security/jce/JCERefGuide.html#PBEEx



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