Bypassing built-in browser authentication when making HTTP calls from embedded Applet.

Question

• I have a simple web page with an embedded Java applet.
• The applet makes HTTP calls to different Axis Cameras who all share the same authentication (e.g. username, password).
• I am passing the user name and password to the Java code upon launch of the applet - no problem.
• When I run from within NetBeans with the applet viewer, I get full access to the cameras and see streaming video - exactly as advertised.
• The problem begins when I open the HTML page in a web browser (Firefox).

• Even though my code handles authentication:

  URL u = new URL(useMJPGStream ? mjpgURL : jpgURL);
  huc = (HttpURLConnection) u.openConnection();
  
  
  String base64authorization = 
      securityMan.getAlias(this.securityAlias).getBase64authorization();
  // if authorization is required set up the connection with the encoded 
  // authorization-information
  if(base64authorization != null)
  {
      huc.setDoInput(true);
      huc.setRequestProperty("Authorization",base64authorization);
      huc.connect();
  }
  
  
  InputStream is = huc.getInputStream();
  connected = true;
  BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream(is);
  dis= new DataInputStream(bis);
  

• The browser still brings up an authentication pop-up and requests the username and password for each camera separately!
• To make things worse, the images displayed from the camera are frozen and old (from last night).
• How can I bypass the browser's authentication?

Answer 1

When running in the browser base64authorization not null, correct?

I'm not really sure what getBase64authorization is supposed to return, but I'm fairly certain when you call huc.setRequestProperty("Authorization", **autorization value**) it's looking for a HTTP Basic authentication value. Meaning **authorization value** needs to be in the format Basic **base 64 encoding of username:password** as described here.

Maybe you just need to add the Basic (note the trailing space) string to your property.