Digest Authentication in IIS 6.0

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

Digest authentication offers the same functionality as Basic authentication; however, Digest authentication provides a security improvement in the way that a user's credentials are sent across the network. Digest authentication transmits credentials across the network as an MD5 hash, or message digest, where the original user name and password cannot be deciphered from the hash. Digest authentication is available to Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) directories. Digest authentication requires HTTP 1.1 compliance.

This section includes the following information: