Chapter 14 -- An Introduction to Kerberos Authentication in Windows 2000

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Chapter 14

In this chapter, we'll focus on the Kerberos authentication protocol used in Microsoft Windows 2000. However, our approach is a little different from most other books on the subject. Rather than covering the low-level details of the protocol, such as data packet contents, we'll cover higher-level aspects of the protocol as they apply to the sample application we built in Chapter 10, "Building a Secure Solution." Numerous sources of information exist regarding the intricate details of the protocol, and we don't want to duplicate that work, mainly because we believe that most people don't (and shouldn't) care about these intricacies.

We also promise not to mention the role of dogs in ancient Greek mythology!

In this chapter, we'll discuss the following topics:

• What is Kerberos authentication?
• How Kerberos authentication works
• Kerberos acronyms
• Helpful tools
• Kerberos ticket flow, in general and in the sample application