The Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) is a framework
for providing authentication and authorization to comunications
protocols. It is defined in RFC 2222 [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2222.txt].
The design attempts to separate the implementation of authentication mechanisms
from the implementation of communications protocols. The result is a set of available
mechanisms that a server and client can select among.

SASL is currently found in SMTP, IMAP, LDAP, BEEP, XMPP and in HTTP authentication.
Some common mechanisms are ANONYMOUS [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2245.txt],
PLAIN, LOGIN, [CRAM-MD5] [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2195.txt],
[DIGEST-MD5] [http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2831.txt], [NTLM] and Kerberos.

[tcllib] 1.8 contains an implementation of SASL that supports the most common
mechanisms. [TclSASL] is a Tcl interface to the cyrus-sasl library which supports
all those implemented by that library.

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See [Marshall T. Rose]'s excellent
"Using SASL: Pluggable Security"
[http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/04/09/sasl.html].

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[[ [Category Security] | [Category Acronym] ]]