Kerberos

A system developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that depends on passwords and symmetric cryptography (DES) to implement ticket-based, peer entity authentication service and access control service distributed in a client-server network environment. [R4120, Stei] (See: realm.)

Tutorial: Kerberos was originally developed by Project Athena and is named for the mythical three-headed dog that guards Hades. The system architecture includes authentication servers and ticket- granting servers that function as an ACC and a KDC.

RFC 4556 describes extensions to the Kerberos specification that modify the initial authentication exchange between a client and the KDC. The extensions employ public-key cryptography to enable the client and KDC to mutually authenticate and establish shared, symmetric keys that are used to complete the exchange. (See: PKINIT.)