2 KERBEROS(8) UNIX System Manager's Manual KERBEROS(8)
5 k
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\bs - introduction to the Kerberos system
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8 Kerberos is a network authentication system. Its purpose is to securely
9 authenticate users and services in an insecure network environment.
11 This is done with a Kerberos server acting as a trusted third party,
12 keeping a database with secret keys for all users and services (collec-
13 tively called _
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15 Each principal belongs to exactly one _
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16 domain in Kerberos. A realm usually corresponds to an organisation, and
17 the realm should normally be derived from that organisation's domain
18 name. A realm is served by one or more Kerberos servers.
20 The authentication process involves exchange of `tickets' and
21 `authenticators' which together prove the principal's identity.
23 When you login to the Kerberos system, either through the normal system
24 login or with the kinit(1) program, you acquire a _
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25 which allows you to get new tickets for other services, such as t
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26 f
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28 For more information on how Kerberos works, and other general Kerberos
29 questions see the Kerberos FAQ at
30 _
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32 For setup instructions see the Heimdal Texinfo manual.
34 S
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35 ftp(1), kdestroy(1), kinit(1), klist(1), kpasswd(1), telnet(1)
37 H
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38 The Kerberos authentication system was developed in the late 1980's as
39 part of the Athena Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
40 Versions one through three never reached outside MIT, but version 4 was
41 (and still is) quite popular, especially in the academic community, but
42 is also used in commercial products like the AFS filesystem.
44 The problems with version 4 are that it has many limitations, the code
45 was not too well written (since it had been developed over a long time),
46 and it has a number of known security problems. To resolve many of these
47 issues work on version five started, and resulted in IETF RFC1510 in
48 1993. Since then much work has been put into the further development, and
49 a new RFC will hopefully appear soon.
51 This manual manual page is part of the H
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52 which has been in development at the Royal Institute of Technology in
53 Stockholm, Sweden, since about 1997.
55 HEIMDAL September 1, 2000 1