digest_file_auth(8)

digest_file_auth8

File based digest authentication helper for squid. version 1.1

Usage

digest_file_auth [-c] file

Overview

digest_file_auth is an installed binary authentication program for Squid. It handles digest authentication protocol and authenticates against a text file backend. This program will automatically detect the existence of a concurrency channel-ID and adjust appropriately. It may be used with any value 0 or above for the auth_param children concurrency= parameter.

Options

-c

Accept digest hashed passwords rather than plaintext in the password file

Configuration

Username database file format:

- comment lines are possible and should start with a '#';
- empty or blank lines are possible;
- plaintext entry format is username:password
- HA1 entry format is username:realm:HA1

To build a directory integrated backend, you need to be able to calculate the HA1 returned to squid. To avoid storing a plaintext password you can calculate MD5(username:realm:password) when the user changes their password, and store the tuple username:realm:HA1. then find the matching username:realm when squid asks for the HA1.

This implementation could be improved by using such a triple for the file format. However storing such a triple does little to improve security: If compromised the username:realm:HA1 combination is "plaintext equivalent" - for the purposes of digest authentication they allow the user access. Password synchronization is not tackled by digest - just preventing on the wire compromise.

Questions

Questions on the usage of this program can be sent to the Squid Users mailing list <[email protected]>

Releases

7 releases since Debian 8 (Jessie); the text changed 6 times.

  1. 8
  2. 9
  3. 10
  4. 11
  5. 12
  6. 13
  7. Arch

Author

This program was written by Robert Collins <[email protected]>

Based on prior work by Arjan de Vet <[email protected]>

This manual was written by Robert Collins <[email protected]> Amos Jeffries <[email protected]>

Reporting bugs

Bug reports need to be made in English. See https://wiki.squid-cache.org/SquidFaq/BugReporting for details of what you need to include with your bug report.

Report bugs or bug fixes using https://bugs.squid-cache.org/

Report serious security bugs to Squid Bugs <[email protected]>

Report ideas for new improvements to the Squid Developers mailing list <[email protected]>

From squid 7.7-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's roff source.