Overview #

Quality of Protection (QoP) is a property of certain SASL Mechanisms (especially the DIGEST-MD5 and GSSAPI mechanisms) that can be used to protect the communication between the client and the server.

There are three different QoP levels:

• auth -- This indicates that the associated SASL Mechanisms should only be used for Authentication of the client connection. It should not provide any other protection for the client-server communication
• auth-int -- This indicates that the associated SASL Mechanismsm should be used for authentication, and then should also provide integrity protection for the communication between the client and server. Integrity protection will not prevent third-party observers from understanding the communication, but it will ensure that a man-In-The-Middle is unable to alter that communication in an undetectable manner
• auth-conf -- This indicates that the associated SASL mechanism should be used for authentication, and then should also provide integrity and confidentiality protection for the communication between the client and the server. This will ensure that third-party observers will NOT be unable to understand the communication

More Information#

There might be more information for this subject on one of the following:

• DIGEST-MD5
• Glossary Of LDAP And Directory Terminology
• QoP