quality of protection

Quality of protection (QoP) is a property of certain SASL mechanisms (especially the DIGEST-MD5 and GSSAPI mechanisms) that can be used to protect the communication between the client and the server.

There are three different QoP levels:

auth

This indicates that the associated SASL mechanism should only be used to authenticate the client connection. It should not provide any other protection for the client-server communication

auth-int

This indicates that the associated SASL mechanism should be used for authentication, and then should also provide integrity protection for the communication between the client and server. Integrity protection will not prevent third-party observers from understanding the communication, but it will ensure that a man-in-the-middle is unable to alter that communication in an undetectable manner

auth-conf

This indicates that the associated SASL mechanism should be used for authentication, and then should also provide integrity and confidentiality protection for the communication between the client and the server. This will ensure that third-party observers will be unable to understand the communication

At the present time, the directory server supports only the auth quality of protection. It does not support either the auth-int or auth-conf levels.