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Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two
book

Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two

by William von Hagen, Brian K. Jones
December 2005
Beginner content levelBeginner
480 pages
13h 27m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Linux Server Hacks, Volume Two

Hack #7. Secure Your System with Kerberos

You can heighten the security of any network by using Kerberos for secure network authentication and encrypted communications.

Kerberos is a distributed authentication and communication service originally developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Kerberos provides secure authentication and communication for client/server applications by using strong cryptography to enable clients to prove their identities to servers over the network.

Kerberos works by exchanging encrypted security information between clients (which can be users or machines), the Kerberos authentication server, and the resource you are trying to access. The information that is initially exchanged when attempting to prove one's identity is known as a ticket. The information used to encrypt tickets and subsequent communications is known as a key. Once the identity of a client is verified, that client is granted a Kerberos token that can be used to verify its identity to any Kerberos-aware service. For security reasons, Kerberos tokens are time-stamped so that they automatically expire unless renewed by a user or service. The primary system for granting tickets (which houses the master copy of the Kerberos database) is known as the Kerberos Key Distribution Center (KDC).

The timestamps contained within Kerberos tokens (and tickets) can be verified only if the time and date are synchronized across Kerberos clients and servers. Kerberos authentication will ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596100825Errata Page