Kerberos for Windows version 3.1 is released

Wed Nov 29 18:23:07 EST 2006

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The MIT Kerberos Development Team and Secure Endpoints Inc. are proud to 
announce the release of MIT's Kerberos for Windows product, Version 3.1.

Please send bug reports and feedback to kfw-bugs at mit.edu.

What's New:
===========

Version 3.1 fixes bugs and adds minor functionality:

*  Improvements to the Network Identity Manager

    1. A serious memory leak has been fixed

    2. Principal names containing numbers are no longer considered 
       invalid

    3. Locales other than en_US are now supported

    4. Arbitrary sort ordering of credentials

    5. Support for FILE: ccaches

    6. Credential properties may be selected by the user for display

    7. User selected font support

    8. Tool Tip support added to the Toolbar

    9. Identities can be added without obtaining credentials

   10. Kerberos 5 Realm editor has been added

* The MSLSA: ccache is disabled in WOW64 environments prior to Microsoft 
  Windows Vista Beta 2 (Windows XP 64, 2003 64, etc.)

* The installers are built using the latest toolkit versions NSIS (2.18)
  and WIX (2.0.4220.0)

Version 3.0 provided several often requested new features:

* thread-safe Kerberos 5 libraries (provided by Kerberos 5 release
   1.4.4)

* a replacement for the Leash Credential Manager called the Network
   Identity Manager

    - a visually enticing application that takes advantage of all of the
      modern XP style User Interface enhancements

    - supports the management of multiple Kerberos 5 identities in a
      variety of credential cache types including CCAPI and FILE.

    - credentials can be organized by credential cache location or by
      identity

    - a single identity can be marked as the default for use by
      applications that request the current default credential cache

    - Network Identity Manager is built upon the Khimaira Identity
      Management Framework introduced this past summer at the AFS &
      Kerberos Best Practices Conference at CMU.

    - Credential Managers for Kerberos 5 and Kerberos 4 are provided. 
      Credential Managers for other credential types including AFS
      and KX.509/KCA are available from third parties.  An AFS 
      credential manager is included as part of OpenAFS for Windows 1.5.9 
      and above.  <http://www.openafs.org/windows.html> 
      Contact Secure Endpoints Inc. for details regarding other 
      credential types.  <https://www.secure-endpoints.com>

    - The Khimaira framework is a pluggable engine into which custom
      Identity Managers and Credential Managers can be added.
      Organizations interested in building plug-ins for the Network
      Identity Manager may contact Jeffrey Altman at 
      jaltman at secure-endpoints.com

* a Kerberos specific WinLogon Network Provider that will use the
   username and password combined with the MIT Kerberos default realm in
   an effort to obtain credentials at session logon

Important changes since the 2.6.5 release:
==========================================

* This release requires 32-bit editions of Microsoft Windows 2000 or
   higher. Support for Microsoft Windows 95, 98, 98 Second Edition, ME,
   and NT 4.0 has been discontinued.  Users of discontinued platforms
   should continue to use MIT Kerberos for Windows 2.6.5.

* Version 3.0 does not include any internal support for AFS.   The
   aklog.exe utility now ships as a part of OpenAFS for Windows.
   <http://www.openafs.org/windows.html>  The Secure Endpoints Inc. AFS 
   credential module for KFW's Network Identity Manager is distributed 
   as part of OpenAFS for Windows 1.5.9 and above. 

Downloads
=========

Binaries and source code can be downloaded from the MIT Kerberos web site:
   http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/dist/index.html

Acknowledgments
===============

The MIT Kerberos team would like to thank Secure Endpoints Inc. 
<https://www.secure-endpoints.com> for this release.  

Important notice regarding Kerberos 4 support
=============================================

In the past few years, several developments have shown the inadequacy
of the security of version 4 of the Kerberos protocol.  These
developments have led the MIT Kerberos Team to begin the process of
ending support for version 4 of the Kerberos protocol.  The plan
involves the eventual removal of Kerberos 4 support from the MIT
implementation of Kerberos.

The Data Encryption Standard (DES) has reached the end of its useful
life.  DES is the only encryption algorithm supported by Kerberos 4,
and the increasingly obvious inadequacy of DES motivates the
retirement of the Kerberos 4 protocol.  The National Institute of
Standards and Technology (NIST), which had previously certified DES as
a US government encryption standard, has officially announced[1] the
withdrawal of the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) for
DES.

NIST's action reflects the long-held opinion of the cryptographic
community that DES has too small a key space to be secure.  Breaking
DES encryption by an exhaustive search of its key space is within the
means of some individuals, many companies, and all major governments.
Consequently, DES cannot be considered secure for any long-term keys,
particularly the ticket-granting key that is central to Kerberos.

Serious protocol flaws[2] have been found in Kerberos 4.  These flaws
permit attacks which require far less effort than an exhaustive search
of the DES key space.  These flaws make Kerberos 4 cross-realm
authentication an unacceptable security risk and raise serious
questions about the security of the entire Kerberos 4 protocol.

The known insecurity of DES, combined with the recently discovered
protocol flaws, make it extremely inadvisable to rely on the security
of version 4 of the Kerberos protocol.  These factors motivate the MIT
Kerberos Team to remove support for Kerberos version 4 from the MIT
implementation of Kerberos.

The process of ending Kerberos 4 support began with release 1.3 of MIT
Kerberos 5. In release 1.3, the default run-time configuration of the 
KDC disables support for version 4 of the Kerberos protocol. Release 1.4
of MIT Kerberos continues to include Kerberos 4 support (also disabled
in the KDC with the default run-time configuration), but we intend to 
completely remove Kerberos 4 support from some future release of MIT 
Kerberos.

The MIT Kerberos Team has ended active development of Kerberos 4,
except for the eventual removal of all Kerberos 4 functionality.  We
will continue to provide critical security fixes for Kerberos 4, but
routine bug fixes and feature enhancements are at an end.

We recommend that any sites which have not already done so begin a
migration to Kerberos 5.  Kerberos 5 provides significant advantages
over Kerberos 4, including support for strong encryption,
extensibility, improved cross-vendor interoperability, and ongoing
development and enhancement.

If you have questions or issues regarding migration to Kerberos 5, we
recommend discussing them on the kerberos at mit.edu mailing list.

                               References

[1] National Institute of Standards and Technology.  Announcing
     Approval of the Withdrawal of Federal Information Processing
     Standard (FIPS) 43-3, Data Encryption Standard (DES); FIPS 74,
     Guidelines for Implementing and Using the NBS Data Encryption
     Standard; and FIPS 81, DES Modes of Operation.  Federal Register
     05-9945, 70 FR 28907-28908, 19 May 2005.  DOCID:fr19my05-45

[2] Tom Yu, Sam Hartman, and Ken Raeburn. The Perils of
     Unauthenticated Encryption: Kerberos Version 4. In Proceedings of
     the Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium. The
     Internet Society, February 2004.
     http://web.mit.edu/tlyu/papers/krb4peril-ndss04.pdf

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