Authentication

Authentication is the mechanism for identifying one's self. in the context of the Internet, authentication serves as the primary means for filtering access to protected resources. HTTP, the Hypertext Transfer Protocol, is an accepted standard for exchanging hypermedia in a distributed and collaborative environment. HTTP 1.1, [1] is the latest version of the protocol, in popular consumption.

Authentication on HTTP 1.1 is a framework supporting two popular mechanisms for requesting and providing credentials in non-secure environments [2]. One, being the simple passing of username and password as encoded text, known as Basic Access Authentication and the other based on cryptographic hashes, known as Digest Access Authentication.

This article by Senaka L. Fernando serves as a guide to using  Extensions for HTTP Authentication in Axis2/C.