When your client application connects to the directory, the first operation to perform is a bind operation. The bind operation authenticates the client to the directory.

You perform simple authentication by binding with the distinguished name of a user's directory entry and the user's password. For this reason simple authentication over unsecure network connections should be done only in the lab. If your real end users are providing their passwords, your application must use simple authentication only if the network is secure. To bind using Barbara Jensen's identity and simple authentication, for example, your application would provide the DN uid=bjensen,ou=People,dc=example,dc=com with the password hifalutin. The directory stores the password value used for simple authentication in binary form on the userPassword attribute of the entry. In other words, for the purposes of your application the password is not a string, but instead an array of bytes. Typically the directory is further configured to store only hashed values of user passwords, rather than plain text versions. Thus even if someone managed to read the stored password values, they would still have to crack the hash in order to learn the actual passwords. When your application performing simple authentication sends the password value, the directory server therefore hashes the password value, and then compares the hashed result with the value of the userPassword on the user entry. If the values match, then the directory authenticates the user. Once the user has authenticated, the directory determines authorization for operations on the connection based on the users identity. // LDAP simple authentication final LDAPConnectionFactory factory = new LDAPConnectionFactory( hostName, port); Connection connection = null; try { connection = factory.getConnection(); connection.bind(userName, password.toCharArray()); System.out.println("Authenticated as " + userName + "."); // Perform LDAP operations here. } // Catch any exceptions here, and then close the connection. finally { if (connection != null) { connection.close(); } } If the password values do not match, a directory might nevertheless authenticate the client application. The LDAP specifications say that in this case, however, the directory authenticates the user as anonymous, therefore no doubt with fewer rights than the normal user, and surely fewer rights than an administrator.

TODO

TODO