What Is Kerberos - Explained

if you are looking for an explination as what kerberos really is, i will try.

in 1983, researcher at MIT started a five-year project to inforporate computer into the MIT curriculum. as poar of the porject, a leading edge network authentication protofcol was developed. it was named Kerberos, after the three-headed dog that guarded the entrances to Hades in Greek mythology.

in 1989, version 4 was publicly released in open source doe. although kerberos 4 is still in use in a few environements, berberos 5 is the standard today. kerberos is a feely available to anyone in the US and candad from the following web page

kerberos provides a means to authenticate users and services over an open multi-platform network using a single login procedure. after the user is authenticated by the system, all subsequent commands and transactions can be carried out securly without any prompting for a password.

in short, kerberos is an authentication protocol.

there are some components in kerberos:

* principal - any inuely named client or server to which kerbeor can assign tickets

* authentication server

* ticket-ratning server

* key distribution center

* realm

* remote ticket-granting server