On 02/03/2014 09:41 AM, Rick van Rein wrote:
> Looking at SPNEGO (and probably other protocols as well) I see that the 
> server can take the initiative for an GSSAPI exchange, and when doing so, it 
> could already challenge the client.

What are you looking at specifically?  GSSAPI exchanges begin with the
client.

> The way I see it, asking a client to decrypt *anything* is possible, as long 
> as the result is unpredictable to the client of course.  For instance, a 
> random byte series could be created by the server and sent to the client for 
> decryption.  Whatever the block cipher makes of that, is the proper answer; 
> the server can make the same computation when it receives the ticket (with 
> the session key) and the response to the challenge (decrypted with the 
> session key).

Even if the server could speak first in a GSSAPI exchange and provide a
challenge, you would need three legs to achieve mutual authentication
with krb5, because a server cannot authenticate itself to a client
without first receiving a ticket.

Also, the modern incarnation of the krb5 GSS mech is built on RFC 3961,
which does not assume direct access to the block cipher; you get an
authenticated encryption and decryption function instead.  So "please
decrypt this random block of data" would be difficult to fit there.
That's a minor point, though; if the server could speak first with a
challenge, preventing replays would be as simple as incorporating the
server challenge into the authenticator checksum.
________________________________________________
Kerberos mailing list           [email protected]
https://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/kerberos

Reply via email to