[792] in Kerberos
Re: Questions on Kerberos usage
daemon@TELECOM.MIT.EDU (Jeffrey I. Schiller)
Sun Sep 10 00:27:43 1989
From: Jeffrey I. Schiller <jis@ATHENA.MIT.EDU>
To: cole@cs.wisc.edu
Cc: kerberos@ATHENA.MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Bruce Cole's message of Fri, 8 Sep 89 11:23:28 -0500 <8909081623.AA01464@dip.cs.wisc.edu>
When we first started converting existing users here at MIT
from Unix password authentication to Kerberos authentication we did so
over a transition period. In this period we installed a hacked up
version of the "passwd" command that would change your password in the
local password file *and* register you with the kerberos database. A
special server was run on the kerberos database server system that
accepted requests on a privileged port (barf ech!). There were two
interesting cases:
1) User changing his password for which no kerberos entry existed.
2) User changing his password for which a kerberos entry already
existed.
Case [2] was handled by getting tickets for the user using the "old
password." The request sent to kerberos with the new password was of
course encrypted. This use of the passwd program is secure (provided
the old password isn't compromised). This is essentially the password
changing program in use today.
Case [1] was handled by the password program, upon failing to get
tickets for the user in question, would get tickets for the user named
"default.changepw." This user had a constant password hardcoded into
the password changing program. Default.changepw had access (via the
special hacked server) to add new people to the database, but could
not change the password of an existing user.
We made noise publicly asking people to change their passwords
(even if they only changed it to the same string!) so that our
database would get populated. At some point (more then a year) we
cutover our environment to depend on Kerberos authentication. At that
point people who didn't change their password were not able to login
until they saw a system administrator and got their Kerberos password
established.
Note: People in this category still surface!
-Jeff
