Creation of principal without password

[Ken Raeburn]

(PLEASE don't include kerberos-announce in the recipient list on  
queries.  It's just more work for us to go delete the messages from  
the moderation queue.)

On Aug 17, 2006, at 06:07, ronnie sahlberg wrote:
> a principal witout its associated password would be pointless for
> kerberos since that account would not be able to use tickets that by
> definition are encrypted with a key based on said accounts password.

Not at all... a keytab file could be generated to store the key  
directly, without using a password.  In fact, in the MIT  
implementation, this is the normal case for server principals.

Theoretically, if you separated the "create principal" and "set  
password" privileges into different groups of admins, you could  
create a new account for a new hire, or an incoming group of  
students, or whatever (assuming your local policy dictates how  
principal names are formed, and doesn't give the users the option),  
with a random key, and then let a less-privileged administrator set  
the password for the user later.  Offhand I don't know of anyone who  
does it this way, but you *could*...

Ken