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Comment on Using www-authenticate for user authentication

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I don't understand why "no cookies" is listed under "pros". This works exactly like a session cookie (a header attached to every request to the domain), the only difference is that the header contains your actual plain-text credentials instead of a token. It is at most as secure/safe/non-invasive as a cookie, and in a lot of situation, a lot less.

The obvious way to improve it would be to offer a way for the browser to load a custom form to authenticate and get the (hashed) credentials to present to the original website in the header. And then you have recreated session cookies in full.

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