authenticate a WebDAV client to a server unless the connection is
   secure. Furthermore, a WebDAV server MUST NOT send Basic
   authentication credentials in a WWW-Authenticate header unless the
   connection is secure.  Examples of secure connections include a
   Transport Layer Security (TLS) connection employing a strong cipher
   suite with mutual authentication of client and server, or a
   connection over a network which is physically secure, for example, an
   isolated network in a building with restricted access.




 
RFC 2518                         WEBDAV                    February 1999


   WebDAV applications MUST support the Digest authentication scheme
   [RFC2069]. Since Digest authentication verifies that both parties to
   a communication know a shared secret, a password, without having to
   send that secret in the clear, Digest authentication avoids the
   security problems inherent in Basic authentication while providing a
   level of authentication which is useful in a wide range of scenarios.

17.2 Denial of Service

   Denial of service attacks are of special concern to WebDAV servers.
   WebDAV plus HTTP enables denial of service attacks on every part of a
   system's resources.

   The underlying storage can be attacked by PUTting extremely large
   files.

   Asking for recursive operations on large collections can attack
   processing time.

   Making multiple pipelined requests on multiple connections can attack
   network connections.

   WebDAV servers need to be aware of the possibility of a denial of
   service attack at all levels.

17.3 Security through Obscurity

   WebDAV provides, through the PROPFIND method, a mechanism for listing
   the member resources of a collection.  This greatly diminishes the
   effectiveness of security or privacy techniques that rely only on the
   difficulty of discovering the names of network resources.  Users of
   WebDAV servers are encouraged to use access control techniques to
   prevent unwanted access to resources, rather than depending on the
   relative obscurity of their resource names.

17.4 Privacy Issues Connected to Locks

   When submitting a lock request a user agent may also submit an owner
   XML field giving contact information for the person taking out the
   lock (for those cases where a person, rather than a robot, is taking
   out the lock). This contact information is stored in a lockdiscovery
   property on the resource, and can be used by other collaborators to
   begin negotiation over access to the resource.  However, in many
   cases this contact information can be very private, and should not be
   widely disseminated.  Servers SHOULD limit read access to the
   lockdiscovery property as appropriate.  Furthermore, user agents






 
RFC 2518                         WEBDAV                    February 1999


   SHOULD provide control over whether contact information is sent at
   all, and if contact information is sent, control over exactly what
   information is sent.

17.5 Privacy Issues Connected to Properties

   Since property values are typically used to hold information such as
   the author of a document, there is the possibility that privacy
   concerns could arise stemming from widespread access to a resource's
   property data.  To reduce the risk of inadvertent release of private
   information via properties, servers are encouraged to develop access
   control mechanisms that separate read access to the resource body and
   read access to the resource's properties.  This allows a user to
   control the dissemination of their property data without overly
   restricting access to the resource's contents.

17.6 Reduction of Security due to Source Link

   HTTP/1.1 warns against providing read access to script code because
   it may contain sensitive information.  Yet WebDAV, via its source
   link facility, can potentially provide a URI for script resources so
   they may be authored.  For HTTP/1.1, a server could reasonably
   prevent access to source resources due to the predominance of read-
   only access.  WebDAV, with its emphasis on authoring, encourages read
   and write access to source resources, and provides the source link
   facility to identify the source.  This reduces the security benefits
   of eliminating access to source resources.  Users and administrators
   of WebDAV servers should be very cautious when allowing remote