I am using the Authenticator class in Java for proxy authentication in my application. The authentication works correctly when I enter the wrong credentials initially, as it throws an error. However, once I enter the correct credentials, subsequent attempts with incorrect credentials still succeed. It seems like the correct credentials are being cached and reused even when I want to authenticate with new credentials.

Code Example:
Here’s a simplified version of my code:

Authenticator.setDefault(new Authenticator() {
    @Override
    protected PasswordAuthentication getPasswordAuthentication() {
        return new PasswordAuthentication(username, password.toCharArray());
    }
});

After the initial correct authentication, I can’t seem to override the credentials with wrong ones.

Attempts to Resolve:

• I tried setting the Authenticator to null after each attempt:

  Authenticator.setDefault(null);
  

• I also tried creating a new Authenticator instance for each authentication attempt to prevent credential caching.

Questions:

1. Why are the credentials being cached even after setting the Authenticator to null?
2. How can I ensure that the Authenticator doesn’t cache credentials and each authentication attempt uses fresh credentials?

Additional Information:

1. The application is a simple Java console application.
2. The proxy requires basic HTTP authentication.
   I’m running Java version 11.0.19 on Windows 10.