file-based credentials vs memory-based credentials

Guillaume Rousse Guillaume.Rousse at inria.fr
Wed Jan 20 07:35:21 EST 2010


Hello.

I sometimes hears than kerberos 5 security is lowered by the use of file 
based credentials, whereas kerberos 4 was using shared memory instead, 
making much more difficult to an admin (for instance) to retrieve a 
valid user ticket.

I know an admin user can scan the memory for a user ticket, but a quick 
google search on the issue didn't returned any such tool ready for user. 
And unless some string pattern make easy to grep /proc/kcore for 
extracting those ticket, is this assertion reserved to admins able to 
craft a dedicated memory scanning tool ?

Also, I've read than kerberos 5 specification doesn't enforce one or the 
other kind of storage, that's just MIT and heimdal implementation 
choices. Are they any way, for both of them, to use memory-based 
credential cache instead ?
-- 
BOFH excuse #91:

Mouse chewed through power cable



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