Scenario:
I have a ASP.Net / Silverlight website with webservices for supporting the Silverlight apps with data. The website uses forms authentication, and thus the webservices can also authenticate requests.
Now I would like to pull some data from this system to a Android application. I could implement code for running the forms login, and storing the authentication cookie, but it would actually be much simpler to send the username and password in the webservice url and authenticate each call. I don’t really see a big problem with this as the communication is SSL encrypted, but I’m open to be conviced otherwise 😉
What do you think ? Bad idea / not so bad idea ?
Conclusion:
After reviewing the answers the only really valid argument against name / pass in the url request string is that it’s stored in the server log files. Granted it’s my server and if that server is hacked the the data it stores will also be hacked, but I still don’t like passwords showing up in logs. (Thats why they are stored salted and encrypted)
Solution:
I will post the username and passord with the request. Minimal extra work, and more secure.
See Are querystring parameters secure in HTTPS (HTTP + SSL)?
Everything will be encrypted, but the URLs, along with the query string (and thus the passwords) will show up in the server log files.