Protocol: Kerberos

This lesson explains the interactions of the various entities in the Kerberos protocol.

Now let’s look at the exchanges that happen among the various players involved in a Kerberos system. Say you want to communicate with a service (the friend from the analogy in the previous lesson), but need to prove your identity to the Authentication Server first (the oracle from the analogy). Once you have proven your identity to the Authentication Server, you can request a ticket from the Ticket Granting Server (the postman) to communicate with the desired service (the friend from the analogy). The ordered list of interactions is as follows:

  1. The Authentication Server (AS) has a copy of the cryptographic key generated from your password and also the key for the Ticket Granting Service (TGS).

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