Which type of protocol is kerberos?
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Kerberos is a strong network authentication protocol which facilitates secure communications between Client and Server. It’s based on symmetric key encryption and uses three shared secret keys to ensure secure communication. It provides a solid mechanism to authenticate users without using the ordinary Username/Password methods and totally avoids the transferring of the password over the network. Show The term ‘Kerberos’ originally comes from Greek mythology stories which refer to a three-headed hound that guards the gates to the underworld. The protocol got its name because it uses three shared secret keys in its flow, which symbolizes three heads of the Kerberos hound. Let’s suppose that a particular client wants to access the resources of a remote server using the Kerberos protocol. In such a case, the client must be first verified through a trusted third party. We call this third party as Key Distribution Center (KDC). A
KDC includes two servers. Which are, Keeping those details in mind, let’s come to the summarized flow of the Kerberos authentication protocol. Step1: Step2: Step3: Step4: Step5: Step6: Kerberos is one of the major improvement of previous authentication/authorization technologies. It’s a highly secured web standard which widely used to implement Single-Sign-On (SSO) across different platforms. Its usage of strong cryptography and third-party validation makes it much more difficult for malicious users to compromise the client-server communication. Please feel free to share your ideas regarding the post if you found the content is useful. References Recommended textbook solutions
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Introduction to Algorithms3rd EditionCharles E. Leiserson, Clifford Stein, Ronald L. Rivest, Thomas H. Cormen 720 solutions What is Kerberos?Kerberos is one of the oldest authentication protocols in existence and it has been heavily used by Microsoft for authentication purposes for decades. Developed at MIT in the 1980's, it became an IETF Standard in 1993. Kerberos, so named as a reference to the three-headed dog from ancient Greek mythology, uses a three way authentication mechanism that inserts a trusted third party called the Key Distribution Center (KDC) into the authentication process. This KDC breaks down into two logical services called the Authentication Server (AS) and the Ticket Granting Server (TGS). The fundamental concept is to eliminate the need to send passwords over the network; instead a hash of the user's password is sent and checked on both sides of the connection. Over the years Kerberos has undergone several revisions with the most current being Version 5, Release 1.18.3 released in November of 2020. Early versions of Kerberos used the now defunct 3DES encryption algorithm which was later replaced by the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) as discussed in RFC3962. In 2008 shortly after the public release of TLS 1.2 the IETF began exploring the idea of using TLS 1.2 to enhance Kerberos security, since then support has been added though it does not come enabled by default. How does Kerberos work?While it is derived from symmetric key algorithms which use the same key for encryption as for decryption, Kerberos is capable of both symmetric and asymmetric cryptography. Authentication is a complex process, but here is a simplified rundown:
What are common security vulnerabilities with Kerberos?Attackers have continued to target Kerberos directly as a vector for theft or forgery of authentication material. Tactics such as Kerberos golden ticket attacks, silver ticket attacks, pass-the-ticket, and more have been used as privilege escalation mechanisms by savvy attackers. In 2017, researches found a vulnerability which had existed in Kerberos for more than twenty years. They were able to get Kerberos to send unencrypted tickets which could be used to bypass authentication, using the fact that Kerberos didn't encrypt the entirety of the tickets, but left some if it in plain text. This particular vulnerability has since been patched, but it still has vulnerabilities with several versions of Windows Server, Vista, and Windows 7, 8, and 8.1. Is Kerberos a protocol?In our world, Kerberos is the computer network authentication protocol initially developed in the 1980s by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) computer scientists. The idea behind Kerberos is to authenticate users while preventing passwords from being sent over the internet.
Is Kerberos a AAA protocol?Kerberos was also designed to interface with secure accounting systems. This provided the third "A" of the authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) triad.
What type of authentication is Kerberos?Kerberos uses symmetric key cryptography and requires trusted third-party authorization to verify user identities.
Is Kerberos TCP or UDP?Kerberos is primarily a UDP protocol, although it falls back to TCP for large Kerberos tickets. This may require special configuration on firewalls to allow the UDP response from the Kerberos server (KDC). Kerberos clients need to send UDP and TCP packets on port 88 and receive replies from the Kerberos servers.
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