Kerberos Implementation in a distributed Windows environment

[sanford.sham@accenture.com]

Hi

I'm just writing to ask a question, currently related to my project.

We are trying to implement Kerberos security in our distributed Windows
environment. We have, more than one, dedicated Windows 2k boxes (let's
called them EAI boxes) that are used to communicate with WebSphere servers,
using Kerberos tickets etc.

We have more than one EAI boxes that's online at any given time. All the NT
services are hosted under the same Windows domain account. Bascially, it's
as if the same domain account is used to host multiple services, on
multiple machines.

The problem comes when simultaneous transactions are conducted. Let's say
all EAI boxes fires a transactions to the same Websphere services at the
same time. Since it's hosted by the same domain account, the user that is
seen on the kerberos ticket is the same. Also, since it is fired at the
same time, the timestamp is the same (or very close). Therefore, after
receiving the first transactions, Websphere rejects all subsequent
transactions on the basis of duplicate Kerberos tickets being sent (or
replay).

Microsoft says that there is nothing they can do to fix this. They argue
that the standard specifies that only [Client Id, Timestamp] is used in the
authenticator, and they would not modify this to make the authenticator
more unique.

Can you provide a view on this? Thanks very much for you help.

Regards
Sanford


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