I would like to know about the Kerberos authentication.

I would like to know about the Kerberos authentication.

Kerberos was developed at the MIT or Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Athena Project. It is a protected technique for validating a request for a service in a network. It is a network authentication protocol designed to give strong authentication or validation for server/client applications by means of secret-key cryptography.

The name Kerberos was taken from Greek mythology which is a 3-headed dog that guards the gates of Hades. Kerberos allows a user to request an encrypted “ticket” from a validation process. The encrypted “ticket” can then be used to request a specific service from a server. The password used by the user doesn’t have to pass over the network.

You can download a version of Kerberos, both the client and the server, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] or purchase a commercial version. Kerberos contains the following features:

• It is secure. The password is never sent except if it is encrypted.
• You only need to login once per session. The credentials identified when you login are distributed between resources without requiring additional logins.
• The idea depends on KDC or Key Distribution Center, a trusted third party. It is aware of every system in the network and all systems trust KDC.
• It carries out mutual validation or authentication where a client verifies its identity to a server and likewise, the server verifies its identity to the client.