HTTP Digest Authentication for WordPress

This plugin adds an additional layer of protection for the wp-login.php page using HTTP Digest Authentication with the PHP header() function.

So it doesn’t require configuring web server files like .htaccess or .htdigest and works on all web hosting environments.

Important: If you already have a plugin which does HTTP Authentication please deactivate it before activating this plugin. Similarly if you have configured your web server to do HTTP authentication on the wp-login.php file please remove it before using this plugin.

If you are using FastCGI PHP this plugin may keep prompting for the credentials even if you enter the right pair, in this case use the following in your .htaccess file

<IfModule mod_setenvif.c> SetEnvIfNoCase ^Authorization$ "(.+)" PHP_AUTH_DIGEST=$1 </IfModule>

Advantages of HTTP Digest Authentication

Digest Authentication is very much safer than HTTP Basic Authentication whose credentials can be easily decoded with a base64 decoder.

From Wikipedia on HTTP Basic Authentication:

The BA (Basic Authentication) mechanism provides no confidentiality protection for the transmitted credentials. They are merely encoded with BASE64 in transit, but not encrypted or hashed in any way.

Digest Authentication on the other hand uses MD5 on the credentials making it “one way”

Uses server and client nonces to prevent replay attacks

Features of the HTTP Digest Auth plugin

Works using PHP header() function and doesn’t require modification of service config files (like .htaccess, nginx.conf etc)