Extension of Kerberos with X.509 and Integration of Elliptic Curve Cryptography in Authentication

Murat Akkaya

doi:10.4236/ijcns.2016.912046

Abstract

Kerberos is one of the solutions for network security problems since it provides strong secret key cryptography over the insecure networks. Through the Kerberos authentication protocol, a client can prove its identity to a server (and vice versa) across an insecure network connection such as on Internet. In this comparative research paper, the Kerberos authentication protocol is extended and strengthened using x.509 with the integration of newer authentication system which is compared with previous authentication systems. In addition to this, RSA encryption mechanism used to provide authentication and security for the most communication systems replaced with Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) encryption in Kerberos during authentication progress through simulation to expose possible efficient alternatives for key generation and to enhance security.

Highlights

Proper authentication is an important aspect of security systems, even in networking
Another question is whether the Kerberos authentication protocol able to identify an AS much like it identifies the usual principals
While Kerberos is used for authentication, what happens between client and server after authentication may be susceptible to further attacks

Summary

Introduction

Proper authentication is an important aspect of security systems, even in networking. There exist several variations of the Kerberos protocol, but the underlying procedure of a classic Kerberos protocol remains the same: client requests the authentication server to confirm the identity of the server; authentication server encrypts servergenerated ID + temporary encryption key (session key) using the client’s key and relays it back to the client; client encrypts its ticket and the session key using the server’s key and transmits it back to the server; authentication server uses this to authenticate client, to authenticate the server . Work done so far will be reviewed to find unaddressed issues or concerns about the Kerberos and x.509 authentication protocols

Literature Survey

Simulation Experiment

Findings of DES-RSA-ECC

Comparison of the Results

Conclusions