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Kerberos FAQ, v2.0 (last modified 8/18/2000)
Section - 1.17. Are there security risks involved in cross-realm authentication?

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When you set up a cross-realm secret, you are in essence trusting the remote
KDC to only issue cross-realm tickets for the correct users. If you do not
trust the foreign KDC then all principals from the foreign realm are
suspect.

However, a realm which you share a cross-realm secret with cannot acquire a
ticket for a user in your local realm; a foreign KDC can only cause tickets
to be issued that identify users from the foreign realm (in other words,
there's no way a KDC can cause a ticket to be generated for a principal in a
realm other than it's own).

All of the daemons that come with the MIT Kerberos 5 release do not trust
principals in foreign realms by default; you have to explicitly enable them
using ACLs. So as long as foreign-realm principals are not on any ACLs in
your realm, there isn't a risk.

If you do decide to place foreign-realm principals on ACLs, you will have to
remember that the security of that principal depends on the security of the
foreign realm.

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Top Document: Kerberos FAQ, v2.0 (last modified 8/18/2000)
Previous Document: 1.16. What is cross-realm authentication?
Next Document: 1.18. Are there any known weaknesses in Kerberos?

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Send corrections/additions to the FAQ Maintainer:
Ken Hornstein <kenh@cmf.nrl.navy.mil>





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