Re: choosing principal names

Booker Bense <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.encryption.kerberos.heimdal.general
Message-ID <[email protected]>
On Thu, 6 Oct 2011, [email protected] wrote:

>
> Oh yes PAC, it is a way to use Kerberos to deliver more of verified data
> than the mere principal name.
>
> May be it is what Booker Bense meant as an alternative to using
> principal names for making authorization desicions.
>

Not at all, GSSAPI et al are just stop gap measures in which it 
is impossible to write a complete application. Just like kerberos
provides a centralized authentication service, you need a 
centralized authorization and naming service. In an ideal
world principals would simply be uuid's that provide a key
to retrieving authorization and naming data. In the current 
world, using the principal as a key to perform an LDAP lookup
is about as close as you can feasibly get. Embedding that ldap
lookup in a PAC is just a performance hack.

Until DCE is eventually reinvented in a form that actually works,
there will continue to be a mishmash of hacks to bridge the 
missing pieces. Adding meaning to principal names simply 
encourages the same bad design, pretending they are content-free
keys will at least move you in the correct direction.

I get the point of the poor admin trying to actually build
a working system with this stuff, but at some point you just
have to accept that it's got limitations and move on.

- Booker C. Bense
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