Basic Auth - Instructions

The most basic form of HTTP authentication is Basic Authentication. Where a username and password are base64 encoded in an Authentication header.

Basic Authentication

When a page protected by basic authentication is accessed in a browser, a dialog will usually be shown so the user can enter a username and password.

This will then be sent to the server in an Authorization header.

To access the protected page, use the username and password

  • username: authorized
  • password: password001

After entering the details, the results page will show you if you have been authenticated or not, and the reason will also be displayed.

Explore Using the Dev Tools

Using the browser dev tools you can see the network traffic.

View the request send to the server and examine the Authorization header.

Explore using different combinations of input and see which states the server checks for.

Automating

Most tools for Automating Browsers have specific methods for accessing Basic Authenticated pages.

API Testing

You could also treat the protected page as an API and create the Authorization header in the API request.

To use as API:

  • Issue a GET to /pages/auth/basic-auth/basic-auth-results.html
  • You should set the Accept header to appllication/json
  • You should add a Basic Authorization header e.g
    • Authorization: Basic YXV0aG9yaXplZDpwYXNzd29yZDAwMQ==