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Trail: Java Naming and Directory Interface(TM).
Lesson: Advanced Topics for LDAP Users
Section: Security
Advanced Topics for LDAP Users
LDAP v3
JNDI as an LDAP API
How LDAP Operations Map to JNDI APIs
How LDAP Error Codes Map to JNDI Exceptions
Security
Modes of Authenticating to LDAP
Authentication Mechanisms
Anonymous
Simple
SASL
Digest-MD5
SSL and Custom Sockets
More LDAP Operations
LDAP Compare
Search Results
LDAP Unsolicited Notifications
Connection Management
Creation
Closing
Pooling
Configuration
Frequently Asked Questions
Home Page > Java Naming and Directory Interface(TM). > Advanced Topics for LDAP Users
Simple

> Simple authentication consists of sending the LDAP server the fully qualified DN of the client (user) and the client's clear-text password (see RFC 2251 and RFC 2829). This mechanism has security problems because the password can be read from the network. To avoid exposing the password in this way, you can use the simple authentication mechanism within an encrypted channel (such as SSL), provided that this is supported by the LDAP server.

> Both the LDAP v2 and v3 support simple authentication.

> To use the simple authentication mechanism, you must set the three authentication environment properties as follows.

> `Context.SECURITY_AUTHENTICATION`.
>   Set to `"simple"`.
> `Context.SECURITY_PRINCIPAL`.
>   Set to the fully qualified DN of the entity that is being authenticated (e.g., `"cn=S. User, ou=NewHires, o=JNDITutorial"`). It is of type `java.lang.String`.
> `Context.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS`.
>   Set to the password of the principal (e.g., `"mysecret"`). It is of type `java.lang.String`, `char` array (`char[]`), or `byte` array (`byte[]`). If the password is a `java.lang.String` or a `char` array, then it is encoded using UTF-8 for the LDAP v3 and using ISO-Latin-1 for the LDAP v2 for transmission to the server. If the password is a `byte[]`, then it is transmitted as is to the server.
> See the example earlier in this section that illustrates how to use simple authentication.

> > Note: If you supply an empty string, an empty `byte`/`char` array, or `null` to the `Context.SECURITY_CREDENTIALS` environment property, then the authentication mechanism will be `"none"`. This is because the LDAP requires the password to be nonempty for simple authentication. The protocol automatically converts the authentication to `"none"` if a password is not supplied.

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