Basic versus Bearer authentication 1 question in 2 chapters
Basic versus Bearer authentication
1.1 How do Basic and Bearer authentication differ? Hard 2 min
Basic sends an encoded username and password, while Bearer presents a token whose possession grants the represented access. Neither encoding nor the word token makes transport safe, so both need TLS. I prefer short-lived, appropriately scoped tokens where the architecture supports them, and I avoid logging credentials. A bearer token also needs validation and authorization checks, not just extraction from a header.
Read the full answer