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I have this code (its a exercise example, so its nothing illegal =) ) viewed in Wireshark

a0001 AUTHENTICATE PLAIN Y2VvAGNlbwBsMldCTlJpcw==\r\n

its an IMAP protocol and obviously using the PLAIN auth method.

so the username and password shall be included in that section "Y2VvAGNlbwBsMldCTlJpcw=="

Can anyone explain to me what \r and \n mean? - and what does == stands for at the end of the string?

Trinimon
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qjay
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2 Answers2

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What you are looking for is explained in the AUTHENTICATE Command section of RFC3501 (the IMAP protocol). AUTHENTICATE PLAIN is one of many possible authentication mechanisms, and it is described in RFC4616. The example in Section 5 of RFC4616 is quite clear.

Community
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Gigi
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The \r and \n are a way of displaying the ASCII newline and carriage return characters. They together just mean end of line.

The Y2VvAGNlbwBsMldCTlJpcw== part is in what is called BASE64 encoding. It represents binary data in printable characters by reencoding it as 6-bit characters (instead of 8-byte bits). The == are part of that encoding specification.

Max
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