Brief Introduction of Kerberos Authentication
Posted in Computer Network Support by freetaotaoKerberos authenticates the identity and encrypts their communications through secret-key cryptography.
Kerberos was developed at MIT in 1998s. It was named after the three-headed watchdog in classical Greek mythology that guards the gates to Hades.
The name is apt because Kerberos is a three-way process, depending on a thrid-party service called the Key distribution center（KDC）to verify one computer’s identity to another and to set up encryption keys for a secure connection between them.
Basically, kerberos works because each computer shares a secret with the KDC, which has two components: a Kerberos authentication server and a ticket-granting server. If KDC doesn’t know the requested target server, it refers the authentication transaction to another KDC that does.
Kerberos is a network authentication protocol that allows one computer to prove its identity to another across an insecure network through an exchange of encrypted messages. Once identity is verified, kerberos provides the two computer with encryption keys for a secure communication session.
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