Is SASL the same as SSL?

What is SASL in Active Directory?

Active Directory (AD) is Microsoft's server and client solution. It is in itself a server component that allows you to create, maintain and manage network security with servers, clients, and domains.

To be able to administer your Active Directory domain efficiently, you should have a basic knowledge of Domain Administration. Since the Active Directory is the back-end system to manage the network environment, it must be configured properly before you can administer it efficiently.

You may not know , let's check out the following: What is SASL? SASL (Simple Authentication and Security Layer) is a technology that enables simple security protocol across any platform using an extensible protocol. The protocol was standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 1996.

SASL defines a simple authentication and security layer for secure communication over unsecured networks. You can use SASL to provide support for strong authentication and security on networks without security infrastructures. SASL also allows the use of extensible and interoperable network protocol extensions to secure connections.

SASL is the main protocol used in many applications such as X Window System protocol, Kerberos Network Authentication Protocol, LDAP over SSL, POP3 over SSL, Internet Message Access Protocol, Secure Sockets Layer, Web Services over Secure Realtime Transport (SRTP) and Secure Real-time Transport (STCP). How does SASL work? In SASL, there are two parts: Authentication : The authentication is done after a proper authentication by the system using a digital certificate. After this authentication is done, a new connection is established.

: The authentication is done after a proper authentication by the system using a digital certificate. Encryption : The communication is encrypted by using either an asymmetric or a symmetric encryption.

What is SASL in Active Directory? SASL is a Microsoft authentication protocol, hence SASL works perfectly with the Active Directory. It is a mechanism that provides support for user authentication to secure network protocols. In Active Directory, SASL is used in the configuration of the User Account Control (UAC) attribute in Active Directory.

What is UAC in Active Directory?

How does SASL authentication work?

I'm trying to understand how SASL authentication works in order to write a proper.

code that uses it in order to authenticate users on my app. Does someone has the time to explain me in details? (exemple: what happens behind the curtains when I call a method. With something like auth.login(username, pass);) Thanks a lot for your help. The main goal of SASL is to have a standard mechanism to authenticate and authorize clients, by implementing a protocol, in this case a protocol as specified in RFC 2222 and RFC 2246. It will allow server and client to agree on security parameters before starting the connection, and keep all communication hidden from network attackers.

Basically, if you look at this diagram, SASL uses mechanisms like Digest and GSSAPI in order to exchange the authentication data you need, among other things. Each one of these is responsible for a different step of the process, and it's up to you to choose which is the best for your implementation.

For more information on SASL, have a look at this answer (which explains a bit more, in addition to the above answer, but not enough to answer the question). This SO post may be helpful in understanding SASL's internals a bit better. See: RFC 2222. In addition to the answer and link I gave earlier, here is a detailed explanation of the steps performed in the process. ? I'm trying to understand how SASL authentication works in order to write a proper code that uses it in order to authenticate users on my app. Does someone has the time to explain me in details? (exemple: what happens behind the curtains when I call a method with something like auth.login(username, pass);)
For example, let's say that you want to support only OAuth2. For that purpose, a user authenticates using username/password or an authorization grant using idtoken/accesstoken.

What is the difference between simple LDAP and SASL?

I am a little confused with the differences between simple LDAP and SASL.

Simple LDAP is used to authenticate users, while SASL is used for authentication. What is the difference between the two? Simple LDAP provides login and authentication through the use of a password. SASL provides login and authentication through the use of public key cryptography. As such, a user's credentials are not stored by the server.

LDAP is a protocol, similar to HTTP and FTP. It is used to transmit the user's name and password to the server, which stores the credentials.

Is SASL the same as SSL?

I am doing some research on SASL, but found so many different definitions of what it actually is and where it is used.

The one used in the following article is: "Symmetric-key access list access control with authentication and privacy". There is no doubt that this is the SASL version used in SSH, but in the article, the writer defines it as a different protocol from SSL (like LDAP). The same thing occurs for other variations of the same definition. So I'm wondering whether these are even related.

I did my research and came up with the conclusion that SASL is completely independent from SSL and there is only a superficial similarity. Here is what I came up with: SASL authentication is independent from SSL authentication. SSL uses plain text as a basis for encryption, SASL requires a secret. SASL only protects data transfer between clients. SSL can protect any kind of data transferred in the Internet or whatever.

A SASL connection to remote service provider can't be considered as an SSL connection, since it is not SSL encrypted, but simply protected. Here are some websites which say the same thing, and which I mentioned to illustrate how ambiguous things become. And there are a few people on the Internet who consider SASL and SSL to be equivalent (see this comment for example), whereas nobody gives any explanation as to why it is that way. As you can see, I am completely perplexed, because some resources say that SASL is totally separate from SSL while others confuse them or say that they are identical. Is there anyone out there who has an explanation for this conundrum? The main question I would like to ask is whether SASL is indeed like SSL or not, and why does it happen to be like this. My hunch is that it's a result of poor English (or just poor knowledge of English). Any help would be very much appreciated!
PS: It may not be relevant for SASL to consider, but just in case, it is worth mentioning that I use Windows.