Passing an empty password to krb5_get_init_creds_password or krb5_init_creds_set_password doesn't not work; it is treated the same as an unspecified password. See also: http://mailman.mit.edu/pipermail/krbdev/2013-May/011525.html https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=960001#c1