The Evolution of the Kerberos Authentication Service
John T. Kohl, Clifford Neuman · 1992
The Kerberos Authentication Service, developed at MIT, has been widely adopted by other organizations to identify clients of network services across an insecure network and to protect the privacy and integrity of communication with those services. While Version 4 was a step up from traditional security in networked systems, extensions were needed to allow its wider application in environments with different characteristics than that at MIT. This paper discusses some of the limitations of Version 4 of Kerberos and presents the solutions provided by Version 5. 1. Introduction The Kerberos Authentication Service was developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to protect the emerging network services provided by Project Athena. Versions 1 through 3 were used internally. Although designed primarily for use by Project Athena, Version 4 of the protocol has achieved widespread use beyond MIT. Models for administration and use of computer services differ from site to site and ...