Denied access to MS Web Server pages

[Chris Adams]

On Feb 9, 2004, at 14:07, Paul Tratnyek wrote:
> When I try the URL for these pages pages, Explorer gives me a dialog 
> box which allows me to login. However, Omniweb says it is not able to 
> connect (denied access). Same thing with Camino and Safari, using OS 
> 10.3.2 or using OS 10.2.8 with Dave (and already logged into the 
> Microsoft network).
>
> Apparently, there is security mechanism that Microsoft has created 
> that is not fully compatible with non-Windows computers and/or 
> non-Explorer browsers, such as my favorite browser: OmniWeb.

Yes - it's NTLM authentication. Basically IIS and Internet Explorer can 
cooperate to use an existing login session so you don't need to login 
to access a website (anyone who's had to support a large intranet can 
appreciate the value in this). Unfortunately this is completely 
proprietary black-art.

Fortunately, it's been reverse engineered:
http://davenport.sourceforge.net/ntlm.html

Mozilla 1.5 added NTLM support on Windows; 1.6 included support for 
other platforms as well:

http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=224653

It's certainly possible but I believe porting it would be non-trivial. 
On the plus side I'm certain that a ton of people would find uses for 
it if it became part of one of the Omni frameworks.

Chris