# Elasticsearch Kibana 9.4.0 Basic authentication returns 401 Unauthorized **URL:** https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-kibana-9-4-0-basic-authentication-returns-401-unauthorized/386318 **Category:** Kibana **Created:** [May 13, 2026, 9:02am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-kibana-9-4-0-basic-authentication-returns-401-unauthorized/386318 "2026-05-13T09:02:22Z") **Posts on this page:** 1 **Showing post:** 36
### Author: ![RainTown](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/raintown/32/140206_2.png) [@RainTown](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/RainTown) #### Post date: [May 21, 2026, 2:41pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-kibana-9-4-0-basic-authentication-returns-401-unauthorized/386318/36 "2026-05-21T14:41:54Z")
> [@GeertVerbeurgt](#): > > It was related to a special character ';' in the password of the login user Great news!! I believe ";" is an allowed character in elastic/kibana passwords, in that kibana 9.4.0 did not stop me using it, and the string: ```auto $ echo -n 'testuser1:pass;pass' | base64 dGVzdHVzZXIxOnBhc3M7cGFzcw== $ ``` worked fine for me with all curls I tried using `-H 'Authorization: Basic dGVzdHVzZXIxOnBhc3M7cGFzcw=='` on my 9.4.0 system. So was your issue related to the proxy setup/handling of same, or ... ? Sorry, I'm not quite clear. If `;` in existing (pre-9.4.0) user password would be causing issues that would only be seen in 9.4.0+, that would arguably be a quite subtle but annoying bug? I appreciate issue is solved for you, but if that solution is "dont use `;` characters in passwords" thats ... not great. FYI a while ago I was involved in a thread where use of `!!` chars created bizarre issues in some scenarios, but that issue was [resolved](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-reset-password-on-linux-cant-accept-special-characters/383050) around 9.1.5+. --- _[View the full topic](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-kibana-9-4-0-basic-authentication-returns-401-unauthorized/386318)._