Kerberos: The Definitive Guide

Organization of This Book

Here’s a breakdown of how this book is organized:

Chapter 1

Provides a gentle introduction to Kerberos, and provides an overview of its history and features. It provides a gentle prologue by bringing you from the reasons for the development of Kerberos at MIT through to the latest versions of the protocol.

Chapter 2

Continues where Chapter 1 left off, presenting an introduction to the concepts and terminology that permeate the use and administration of Kerberos. The knowledge of these concepts is essential to the understanding of how Kerberos works as well as how to use and administer it.

Chapter 3

Speaking of how Kerberos works, Chapter 3 reviews the Kerberos protocol via a historical perspective that takes you through the evolution of Kerberos from an academic paper published in 1978 to the modern Kerberos 5 protocol used today. Chapter 3 provides a detailed yet easy-to-follow description of how the Kerberos protocol works and describes the numerous encrypted messages that are sent back and forth.

Chapter 4

Takes you from the realm of the theoretical and conceptual into the practical aspects involved in administering a Kerberos system. Here, the Kerberos implementations that will be discussed throughout the book are introduced, and the basics of the installation and administration of a Kerberos authentication system are described.

Chapter 5

When things go wrong with your Kerberos implementation, Chapter 5 will come in handy. Chapter 5 provides a methodology for ...