[1860] in Kerberos
Re: PC!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o)
Thu Apr 16 23:56:39 1992
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 23:41:31 -0400
From: tytso@Athena.MIT.EDU (Theodore Ts'o)
To: jharvey@weber.edu
Cc: kerberos@Athena.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Justin Harvey's message of Thu, 16 Apr 92 21:24:46 MDT,
Reply-To: tytso@Athena.MIT.EDU
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 21:24:46 MDT
From: jharvey@weber.edu (Justin Harvey)
Lemme get this straight, Kerberos is an OS
compilable on an IBM PC to emulate a Unix envioment, correct?
And if so, do I need TCP or IP, or can I get away without it?
Umm..... no, Kerberos is a network security package which is layered on
top of TCP/IP, using DES cryptography to protect against both active and
passive network attacks. It is intended to replace "authentication by
assertion" (i.e., saying over the network, trust me; I'm root on host X,
so you should let me be root on host Y). Furthermore it is designed to
eliminate passing passwords (or any other replayable token) across the
network in the clear where a network eavesdropper might "steal" the
password as it travels accross the network.
If you're looking for free Unix-like operating systems which run on the
IBM PC, there are two and a half that I know of, all of which require a
386 CPU. They are: Linux, BSD386, and Hurd. (The last is the "half"
since it isn't really stable at this point; the first two aren't rock
solid stable yet, but they are reaching a point where a non-kernel
hacker can use them without too much worry.) At this point, only the
BSD386 supports TCP/IP in the kernel, as for whether you can "get away
without it" --- you need it only if you plan to do any networking on
your system; if you aren't planning to use networking software, then you
obviously won't need TCP/IP.
Given this, do you still want to be on the Kerberos mailing list?
I won't add you to the mailing list unless you send another message
confirming your desire to be on the list, since I'm not sure that this
list is what you were actually looking for.
- Ted
