Mastering Active Directory - Second Edition

The Kerberos protocol

The Kerberos protocol is built to protect authentication between the server and the client in an open network. The main concept behind authentication is that two parties first agree on a password (secret) and then use it to both identify and verify their genuineness:

In the preceding example, Dave and server A have regular communications. They often exchange confidential data. In order to protect this communication, they agree to use a common secret code (1234) to verify their identities before exchanging data. When Dave makes initial communication, he passes his secret to server A and says Hey! I'm Dave. Then, server ...