RFC 7617 · PROPOSED STANDARD · 2015
SUN · 14 JUN 2026
The 'Basic' HTTP Authentication Scheme
Overview
RFC 7617, “The 'Basic' HTTP Authentication Scheme”, is a Proposed Standard document published in September 2015 by J. Reschke. It obsoletes RFC 2617. The canonical text is published by the RFC Editor.
Abstract
This document defines the "Basic" Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) authentication scheme, which transmits credentials as user-id/ password pairs, encoded using Base64.
What “Proposed Standard” means
An entry-level standards-track specification: stable, peer-reviewed and a solid basis for implementation, though it may still evolve before becoming an Internet Standard.
Read this RFC
The canonical text of RFC 7617 is hosted at rfc-editor.org. Available in TXT,HTML.
Relationships to other RFCs
Other RFCs from 2015
- RFC 7616 HTTP Digest Access Authentication
- RFC 7618 Dynamic Allocation of Shared IPv4 Addresses
- RFC 7615 HTTP Authentication-Info and Proxy-Authentication-Info Response Header Fields
- RFC 7619 The NULL Authentication Method in the Internet Key Exchange Protocol Version 2
- RFC 7614 Explicit Subscriptions for the REFER Method
- RFC 7620 Scenarios with Host Identification Complications
- RFC 7613 Preparation, Enforcement, and Comparison of Internationalized Strings Representing Usernames and Passwords
- RFC 7621 A Clarification on the Use of Globally Routable User Agent URIs in the SIP Event Notification Framework