krb5-1.8-beta2 is available

[Tom Yu]

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[The release has been available for download since last night. The
delay in this announcement is due to a remarkable confluence of
infrastructure problems that occurred recently.]

MIT krb5-1.8-beta2 is now available for download from

         http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/dist/testing.html

The main MIT Kerberos web page is

         http://web.mit.edu/kerberos/

This is the code freeze for the krb5-1.8 release, which will probably
have a final release early next week.  We would appreciate feedback on
documentation, particularly about the DES transition and
"allow_weak_crypto".

The README file contains a more extensive list of changes.

DES transition
- --------------

The krb5-1.8 release disables single-DES cryptosystems by default.  As
a result, you may need to add the libdefaults setting
"allow_weak_crypto = true" to communicate with existing Kerberos
infrastructures if they do not support stronger ciphers.

The Data Encryption Standard (DES) is widely recognized as weak.  The
krb5-1.7 release contains measures to encourage sites to migrate away
- From using single-DES cryptosystems.  Among these is a configuration
variable that enables "weak" enctypes, which now defaults to "false"
beginning with krb5-1.8.  The krb5-1.8 release includes additional
measures to ease the transition away from single-DES.

Major changes in 1.8
- --------------------

The krb5-1.8 release contains a large number of changes, featuring
improvements in the following broad areas:

* Code quality
* Developer experience
* Performance
* End-user experience
* Administrator experience
* Protocol evolution

Code quality:

* Move toward test-driven development -- new features have test code,
  or at least written testing procedures.

* Remove applications to a separate distribution to simplify
  independent maintenance.

* Increase conformance to coding style

  + "The great reindent"

  + Selective refactoring

Developer experience:

* Crypto modularity -- vendors can more easily substitute their own
  crypto implementations, which might be hardware-accelerated or
  validated to FIPS 140, for the builtin crypto implementation that
  has historically shipped as part of MIT Kerberos.  Currently, only
  an OpenSSL provider is included, but others are planned for the
  future.

* Move toward improved KDB interface

* Improved API for verifying and interrogating authorization data

Performance:

* Investigate and remedy repeatedly-reported performance bottlenecks.

* Encryption performance -- new crypto API with opaque key structures,
  to allow for optimizations such as caching of derived keys

End-user experience:

* Reduce DNS dependence by implementing an interface that allows
  client library to track whether a KDC supports service principal
  referrals.

Administrator experience:

* Disable DES by default -- this reduces security exposure from using
  an increasingly insecure cipher.

* More versatile crypto configuration, to simplify migration away from
  DES -- new configuration syntax to allow inclusion and exclusion of
  specific algorithms relative to a default set.

* Account lockout for repeated login failures -- mitigates online
  password guessing attacks, and helps with some enterprise regulatory
  compliance.

* Bridge layer to allow Heimdal HDB modules to act as KDB backend
  modules.  This provides a migration path from a Heimdal to an MIT
  KDC.

Protocol evolution:

* FAST enhancements -- preauthentication framework enhancements to
  allow a client to securely negotiate the use of FAST with a KDC of
  unknown capabilities.

* Microsoft Services for User (S4U) compatibility: S4U2Self, also
  known as "protocol transition", allows for service to ask a KDC for
  a ticket to themselves on behalf of a client authenticated via a
  different means; S4U2Proxy allows a service to ask a KDC for a
  ticket to another service on behalf of a client.

* Anonymous PKINIT -- allows the use of public-key cryptography to
  anonymously authenticate to a realm

* Support doing constrained delegation similar to Microsoft's
  S4U2Proxy without the use of the Windows PAC.  This functionality
  uses a protocol compatible with Heimdal.
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