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Kerberos is based on symmetric key cryptography and a requires a trusted third party.
Kerberos was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to protect network services provided by Project Athena. There are several versions of the protocol; versions 1–3 were only used internally at MIT. Versions Kerberos version 4 was published in the late 1980s, although it was targeted primarily for Project Athena. Version 5, published as RFC 1510 in 1993, was designed to overcome limitations and security problems of version 4. Version 4 of Kerberos was designed primarily by Steve Miller and Clifford Neuman. Version 5 was designed by John Kohl and Clifford Neuman. An implementation of Kerberos is freely available from MIT, under copyright permissions similar to those used for BSD.
For some time, Kerberos was classed as a munition within the United States, and could not be exported because it used the DES encryption algorithm (with 56-bit keys). A non-US implementation was developed in SwedenThe Kingdom of Sweden Konungariket Sverige in Swedish) is a Nordic country in Scandinavia, in Northern Europe. It is bordered by Norway on the west, Finland on the northeast, the Skagerrak and the Kattegat on the southwest, and the Baltic Sea and the Gulf which made the system available outside the US before the US export regulations were changed (by 2000This page is about the year 2000. See 2000 AD for the UK comic book, Number 2000 for other uses. 2000 is a leap year starting on Saturday (see link for calendar), and also the International Year for a Culture of Peace''. Events Y2K passes without the seri — more or less).
Kerberos is the default authentication method for Windows 2000Microsoft Windows 2000 (also referred to as Win2K is a 32-bit graphical business-oriented operating system released on February 17, 2000 by the Microsoft Corporation. Windows 2000 comes in four versions: Professional Server Advanced Server and Datacenter and Windows XPWindows XP ( codename Whistler is the latest desktop version of the Windows operating system from Microsoft. It was made publicly available on October 25, 2001. Two editions of Windows XP are most commonly available: Windows XP Home Edition which is targe.
The IETF Kerberos workgroup is currently ( as of 2004) standardizing an updated version [1].
Kerberos is based on the Needham-SchroederNeedham-Schroeder is a computer network authentication protocol designed for use on insecure networks (the Internet for example), invented by Needham and Schroeder. It allows individuals communicating over a network to prove their identity to each other w protocol. Kerberos makes use of a trusted third party, termed a Key Distribution Center (KDC), which consists of two logically separate parts: an Authentication Server (AS) and a Ticket Granting Server (TGS). Kerberos works on the basis of "tickets" which are used to prove the identity of users.
Kerberos maintains a database of secret keys; each entity on the network — whether a client or a server — shares a secret key known only to itself and Kerberos. Knowledge of this key can be used to prove its identity. For communication between two entities, Kerberos generates a session key which can be used to secure their interactions.