Editing Password Authentication Protocol (section)

==Benefits of PAP==
When the client sends a clear-text password, the authentication server will receive it, and compare it to a "known good" password.  Since the authentication server has received the password in clear-text, the [[Password#Form of stored passwords|format of the stored password]] can be chosen to be secure "at rest".  If an attacker were to steal the entire database of passwords, it is computationally infeasible to reverse the function to recover a plaintext password.

As a result, while PAP passwords are less secure when sent over a PPP link, they allow for more secure storage "at rest" than with other methods such as [[Challenge-handshake authentication protocol|CHAP]].