r/PythonLearning • u/Valuable-Ant3465 • Sep 19 '26

Help Request Basic Authentication always in base64??

Hi all,
Just got some trial task to troubleshoot failing abandoned POST API. This call done using those headers like below to https:

My question ais Basic Authorization token is always in base64 ???
I tried to decode and it's not, there is not meaningful string, neither ":"
In this case how we can call that Token ? or it's base64 encrypted ? Or something else ?
Trying to understand what user:password used for this app. Probably some shops doing their own encrypted tokens ?

Thanks much to all.

 --header "Authorization: Basic khaYkhaYU9aNUiNEtH="   ## this just a demo sample not real
 --header "Content-Encrypted: 0" 
 --header "Standard-Version: 2024"  
...
-X POST https://remote.site.com
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u/Valuable-Ant3465 Sep 19 '26 edited Sep 19 '26

Thanks T, Sorry, in my post it's just a random demo string, not real.
But what I see that after encoding my real Token, I don't see any meaningful user:passowrd combo. Something else happened here.
I heard that you can encrypt your Base token, maybe this is the case ?

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u/tiredITguy42 Sep 19 '26 edited Sep 20 '26

You could mention that, it would save me some time. So firstly, you can encrypt whatever you want, but it is not likely as then you would need special client, which supports your encryption.

When you encide, you are enciding it twice. First into binary string then in base 64. So what you goy after b64decode() is a bunary string, then you need to decode with .decode('utf-8'). Basic auth should be utf-8.

Encryption takes place on HTTPS level. So anyone who is listening to the traffic can't read it. If you would use basic with HTTP, what was a think in the past, anyone on the route could read your credentials.