September 2004
Intermediate to advanced
408 pages
7h 25m
English
Content preview from The .NET Developer's Guide to Windows SecurityBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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Chapter 59. What Is Kerberos?
Kerberos is a network authentication protocol based on conventional cryptography; that is to say, it relies on symmetrical cryptographic algorithms that use the same key for encryption as for decryption (Ferguson and Schneier 2003). Network authentication protocols do two things: help you discover who is on the other end of the wire, and help you and your peer exchange a cryptographic key (also known as a session key) so you can maintain integrity and confidentiality protection for the ensuing conversation. What follows is a simplified description of Kerberos that will help you understand what's going on under the hood in Windows.
Kerberos gets its name from the mythological three-headed dog that guards the entrance ...