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RFC 7615 / HTTP AUTHENTICATION INFORMATION

Forward origin information unchanged

03

An intermediary may carry an origin response without becoming the authority for its Authentication-Info value.

DIAGRAMRead RFC section 3 ↗
RFC 7615 · § 3EXAMPLE
3 / 3
Forward origin information unchangedOrigin→proxy→client response path. The origin value note=ready is forwarded unchanged. A separate attempted rewrite to note=changed is stopped at the proxy before delivery; it never replaces the accepted value on a successful path.Origin information stays unchangedClientProxyOriginorigin valueSeparate attempted rewrite:note=changedrewrite forbiddenNo rewritten field delivered
03
Stop an attempted rewrite.

A separate attempted change to note=changed is forbidden while forwarding. The stopped path does not depict successful delivery of the rewritten value.

Source for this drawing: RFC 7615 · Read RFC section 3 ↗

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A request starts a conversation.

A client asks for a resource. A server sends a response. The method, address, headers, and status explain what that conversation means.

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RFC 9110 HTTP RFC 7617 HTTP Basic RFC 8446 TLS 1.3

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This guide explains the 2015 publication. Superseded by RFC 9110.

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KEY POINT

A proxy forwarding a response is not allowed to modify the Authentication-Info field value in any way.

  • A proxy forwarding a response is not allowed to modify the Authentication-Info field value in any way.
  • A proxy’s own authentication information uses Proxy-Authentication-Info and has separate scope; it must not replace the origin field’s value.
  • A syntactically readable value still needs the matching request scheme and its checks. Forwarding unchanged does not make an untrusted origin trusted.
DETAILS

The diagram separates the origin, forwarding proxy and client. It depicts the field value, not HTTP/2 compression, whitespace serialization elsewhere in the message, end-to-end encryption or all intermediary behavior.

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