Book details of 'Kerberos : The Definitive Guide'

Title	Kerberos : The Definitive Guide
Author(s)	Jason Garman
ISBN	0596004036
Language	English
Published	August 2003
Publisher	O'Reilly & Associates

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Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
Kerberos is not flashy, but it is a venerable and mature technology. Yes, it has limited scalability, but most of the "successful" PKI (Public Key Infrastructure) projects are small enough that they could easily have been accomplished with Kerberos technology: an eminently elegant solution to the problem of communicating and authenticating over any channel that is, or must be, assumed to be insecure. Chapter one provides a history, base concepts, and variants of Kerberos. Terms and components are given in chapter two. The Needham-Schroeder work, and the idea of ticket-granting, is in chapter three. Implementation, in chapter four, reviews design, UNIX and Windows servers, and special considerations for a mixed environment. The troubleshooting chapter, five, for once comes early enough in a book to be of use. Security aspects external to Kerberos, and specific settings for different implementations, are covered in chapter six. Chapter seven looks at some generic support for applications, as well as some specific programs that already have Kerberos support built in. Cross realm trust is one of the advanced topics, but most of chapter eight concentrates on special requirements for Windows. Chapter nine is a kind of review of the book, involving the various topics that have been discussed in a sample Kerberos installation. Chapter ten looks at the future of Kerberos, with possible public key additions, Web applications, and smartcards. An appendix contains an administrative command list. While Kerberos may not be as highly regarded as the more mathematically complex asymmetric cryptographic systems, it still have many uses, and this book provides the outline, background, and details to help you take full advantage of them. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2003
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Book description:

Single sign-on is the holy grail of network administration, and Kerberos is the only game in town. Microsoft, by integrating Kerberos into Active Directory in Windows 2000 and 2003, has extended the reach of Kerberos to all networks large or small. Kerberos makes your network more secure and more convenient for users by providing a single authentication system that works across the entire network. One username; one password; one login is all you need. Fortunately, help for administrators is on the way. Kerberos: The Definitive Guide shows you how to implement Kerberos for secure authentication. In addition to covering the basic principles behind cryptographic authentication, it covers everything from basic installation to advanced topics like cross-realm authentication, defending against attacks on Kerberos, and troubleshooting. In addition to covering Microsoft's Active Directory implementation, Kerberos: The Definitive Guide covers both major implementations of Kerberos for Unix and Linux: MIT and Heimdal. It shows you how to set up Mac OS X as a Kerberos client. The book also covers both versions of the Kerberos protocol that are still in use: Kerberos 4 (now obsolete) and Kerberos 5, paying special attention to the integration between the different protocols, and between Unix and Windows implementations. If you've been avoiding Kerberos because it's confusing and poorly documented, it's time to get on board! This book shows you how to put Kerberos authentication to work on your Windows and Unix systems.