Yesterday, the IT department made changes to the Exchange server. I was previously able to use imaplib to fetch messages from the server. But now it seems they have turned off the authentication mechanism I was using. From the output below, it looks as if the server now supports NTLM authentication only.
>>> from imaplib import IMAP4_SSL
>>> s = IMAP4_SSL("my.imap.server")
>>> s.capabilities
( IMAP4 , IMAP4REV1 , IDLE , LOGIN-REFERRALS , MAILBOX-REFERRALS ,
NAMESPACE , LITERAL+ , UIDPLUS , CHILDREN , AUTH=NTLM )
>>> s.login("username", "password")
...
imaplib.error: Clear text passwords have been disabled for this protocol.
Questions:
- How do I authenticate to the imap server using NTLM with imaplib? I assume I have need to use IMAP4_SSL.authenticate("NTLM", authobject) to do this? How do I set up the authobject callback.
- Since SSL/TLS is the only way to connect to the server, re-enabling clear text password authentication should not be a security risk. Correct?
The process that connects to the imap server is running on Linux, BTW. So I am not able to use pywin32.
Edit:
I was able to figure out 1. myself. But how about 2.: Clear text passwords in IMAP over SSL is not a security problem, is it?