Why do "strict acceptor checking"?

Ken Hornstein kenh at cmf.nrl.navy.mil
Tue Oct 8 09:42:55 EDT 2024


>> However, this has made me wonder: why do this at all?  What is the
>> possible security gain here?  It's not the default in the code; you have
>> to explicitly write code to enable this behavior.  But I can't really
>> think of a case where NOT having strict acceptor checking is a security
>> problem; I could maybe squint and envision some kind of weird hosted
>> server setup where it might matter, but I'm not sure that is ever done
>> in the real world.  I will admit it is entirely possible I am missing
>> something; if I am, I'd sure like to understand what I am missing.
>
>I have always operated under the theory that one should make sure that
>the keytab accepts exactly the set of principals that are required.
>This is something that is under the ultimate control of the system
>administrator.  When an application turns on strict acceptor checking,
>they remove this configrability from the system administrator which I
>think makes the system much less flexible.

I'm completely with you, but clearly plenty of application writers do not
agree with this sentiment!  So I'm wondering what I am missing.

--Ken


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