I am trying to fetch an image from an IP camera using HTTP. The camera requires HTTP basic authentication, so I have to add the corresponding request header: URL url = new URL("http://myipcam/snapshot.jpg"); URLConnection uc = url.openConnection(); uc.setRequestProperty("Authorization", "Basic " + new String(Base64.encode("user:pass".getBytes()))); // outputs "null" System.out.println(uc.getRequestProperty("Authorization")); I am later passing the url object to ImageIO.read(), and, as you can guess, I am getting an HTTP 401 Unauthorized, although user and pass are correct. What am I doing wrong? I've also tried new URL("http://user:pass@myipcam/snapshot.jpg"), but that doesn't work either.