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4Kerberos Working Group                                          Karthik 
5                                                             Jaganathan 
6Internet Draft                                                Larry Zhu 
7Document: draft-ietf-krb-wg-kerberos-referrals-03.txt       John Brezak 
8Category: Standards Track                                     Microsoft 
9                                                             Mike Swift 
10                                                          University of  
11                                                             Washington 
12                                                       Jonathan Trostle 
13                                                          Cisco Systems 
14                                                        Expires: August 
15                                                                   2004 
16 
17 
18           Generating KDC Referrals to locate Kerberos realms 
19 
20 
21Status of this Memo 
22 
23   This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with 
24   all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026 [1].  
25    
26   Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering 
27   Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that 
28   other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-
29   Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of 
30   six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other 
31   documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts 
32   as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in 
33   progress."  
34    
35   The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at 
36   http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt  
37   The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at 
38   http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. 
39    
401. Abstract 
41    
42   The draft documents a new method for a Kerberos Key Distribution 
43   Center (KDC) to respond to client requests for kerberos tickets when 
44   the client does not have detailed configuration information on the 
45   realms of users or services. The KDC will handle requests for 
46   principals in other realms by returning either a referral error or a 
47   cross-realm TGT to another realm on the referral path. The clients 
48   will use this referral information to reach the realm of the target 
49   principal and then receive the ticket. 
50    
512. Conventions used in this document 
52    
53   The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", 
54   "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED",  "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in 
55   this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC-2119 [2]. 
56    
57
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62 
633. Introduction 
64    
65   Current implementations of the Kerberos AS and TGS protocols, as 
66   defined in [3], use principal names constructed from a known user or 
67   service name and realm. A service name is typically constructed from 
68   a name of the service and the DNS host name of the computer that is 
69   providing the service. Many existing deployments of Kerberos use a 
70   single Kerberos realm where all users and services would be using 
71   the same realm. However in an environment where there are multiple 
72   trusted Kerberos realms, the client needs to be able to determine 
73   what realm a particular user or service is in before making an AS or 
74   TGS request. Traditionally this requires client configuration to 
75   make this possible. 
76    
77   When having to deal with multiple trusted realms, users are forced 
78   to know what realm they are in before they can obtain a ticket 
79   granting ticket (TGT) with an AS request. However, in many cases the 
80   user would like to use a more familiar name that is not directly 
81   related to the realm of their Kerberos principal name. A good 
82   example of this is an RFC-822 style email name. This document 
83   describes a mechanism that would allow a user to specify a user 
84   principal name that is an alias for the user's Kerberos principal 
85   name. In practice this would be the name that the user specifies to 
86   obtain a TGT from a Kerberos KDC. The user principal name no longer 
87   has a direct relationship with the Kerberos principal or realm. Thus 
88   the administrator is able to move the user's principal to other 
89   realms without the user having to know that it happened. 
90    
91   Once a user has a TGT, they would like to be able to access services 
92   in any trusted Kerberos realm. To do this requires that the client 
93   be able to determine what realm the target service's host is in 
94   before making the TGS request. Current implementations of Kerberos 
95   typically have a table that maps DNS host names to corresponding 
96   Kerberos realms. In order for this to work on the client, each 
97   application canonicalizes the host name of the service by doing a 
98   DNS lookup followed by a reverse lookup using the returned IP 
99   address. The returned primary host name is then used in the 
100   construction of the principal name for the target service. In order 
101   for the correct realm to be added for the target host, the mapping 
102   table [domain_to_realm] is consulted for the realm corresponding to 
103   the DNS host name. The corresponding realm is then used to complete 
104   the target service principal name. 
105    
106   This traditional mechanism requires that each client have very 
107   detailed configuration information about the hosts that are 
108   providing services and their corresponding realms. Having client 
109   side configuration information can be very costly from an 
110   administration point of view - especially if there are many realms 
111   and computers in the environment. 
112    
113   There are also cases where specific DNS aliases (local names) have 
114   been setup in an organization to refer to a server in another 
115   organization (remote server). The server has different DNS names in 
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121   each organization and each organization has a Kerberos realm that is 
122   configured to service DNS names within that organization. Ideally 
123   users are able to authenticate to the server in the other 
124   organization using the local server name. This would mean that the 
125   local realm be able to produce a ticket to the remote server under 
126   its name. You could give that remote server an identity in the local 
127   realm and then have that remote server maintain a separate secret 
128   for each alias it is known as. Alternatively you could arrange to 
129   have the local realm issue a referral to the remote realm and notify 
130   the requesting client of the server's remote name that should be 
131   used in order to request a ticket. 
132    
133   This draft proposes a solution for these problems and simplifies 
134   administration by minimizing the configuration information needed on 
135   each computer using Kerberos. Specifically it describes a mechanism 
136   to allow the KDC to handle Canonicalization of names, provide for 
137   principal aliases for users and services and provide a mechanism for 
138   the KDC to determine the trusted realm authentication path by being 
139   able to generate referrals to other realms in order to locate 
140   principals. 
141    
142   To rectify these problems, this draft introduces three new kinds of   
143   KDC referrals: 
144        
145   1. AS ticket referrals, in which the client doesn't know which realm 
146      contains a user account.  
147   2. TGS ticket referrals, in which the client doesn't know which 
148      realm contains a server account.  
149   3. Cross realm shortcut referrals, in which the KDC chooses the next 
150      path on a referral chain 
151    
1524. Realm Organization Model 
153    
154   This draft assumes that the world of principals is arranged on 
155   multiple levels: the realm, the enterprise, and the world. A KDC may 
156   issue tickets for any principal in its realm or cross-realm tickets 
157   for realms with which it has a direct trust relationship. The KDC 
158   also has access to a trusted name service that can resolve any name 
159   from within its enterprise into a realm. This trusted name service 
160   removes the need to use an untrusted DNS lookup for name resolution. 
161    
162   For example, consider the following configuration, where lines 
163   indicate trust relationships: 
164    
165                  MS.COM  
166                /        \ 
167               /          \ 
168        OFFICE.MS.COM    NT.MS.COM 
169    
170   In this configuration, all users in the MS.COM enterprise could have 
171   a principal name such as alice@MS.COM, with the same realm portion. 
172   In addition, servers at MS.COM should be able to have DNS host names 
173
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178 
179   from any DNS domain independent of what Kerberos realm their 
180   principal resides in. 
181    
1825. Client Name Canonicalization 
183    
184   A client account may have multiple principal names. More useful, 
185   though, is a globally unique name that allows unification of email 
186   and security principal names. For example, all users at MS may have 
187   a client principal name of the form "joe@MS.COM" even though the 
188   principals are contained in multiple realms. This global name is 
189   again an alias for the true client principal name, which indicates 
190   what realm contains the principal. Thus, accounts "alice" in the 
191   realm NT.MS.COM and "bob" in OFFICE.MS.COM may logon as 
192   "alice@MS.COM" and "bob@MS.COM". 
193    
194   This utilizes a new client principal name type, as the AS-REQ 
195   message only contains a single realm field, and the realm portion of 
196   this name doesn't correspond to any Kerberos realm. Thus, the entire 
197   name "alice@MS.COM" is transmitted in the client name field of the 
198   AS-REQ message, with a name type of KRB-NT-ENTERPRISE-PRINCIPAL. 
199    
200        KRB-NT-ENTERPRISE-PRINCIPAL     10 
201    
202   The KDC will recognize this name type and then transform the 
203   requested name into the true principal name. The true principal name 
204   can be using a name type different from the requested name type. 
205   Typically the returned principal name will be a KRB-NT-PRINCIPAL. 
206   The returned name will be the same in the AS response and in the 
207   ticket. The KDC will always return a different name type than KRB-
208   NT-ENTERPRISE-PRINCIPAL. This is regardless of the presence of the 
209   "canonicalize" KDC option. 
210    
211   If the "canonicalize" KDC option is set, then the KDC MAY change the 
212   client principal name and type in the AS response and ticket 
213   regardless of the name type of the client name in the request. For 
214   example the AS request may specify a client name of "fred@MS.COM" as 
215   an KRB-NT-PRINCIPAL with the "canonicalize" KDC option set and the 
216   KDC will return with a client name of "104567" as a KRB-NT-UID. 
217     
2186. Requesting a referral 
219    
220   In order to request referrals, the Kerberos client must explicitly 
221   request the canonicalize KDC option (bit 15) in the KDC options for 
222   the TGS-REQ. This flag indicates to the KDC that the client is 
223   prepared to receive a reply that contains a principal name other 
224   than the one requested. Thus, the KDCOptions types is redefined as: 
225    
226        KDCOptions ::=   BIT STRING { 
227                          reserved(0), 
228                          forwardable(1), 
229                          forwarded(2), 
230                          proxiable(3), 
231                          proxy(4), 
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236 
237                          allow-postdate(5), 
238                          postdated(6), 
239                          unused7(7), 
240                          renewable(8), 
241                          unused9(9), 
242                          unused10(10), 
243                          unused11(11), 
244                          canonicalize(15), 
245                          renewable-ok(27), 
246                          enc-tkt-in-skey(28), 
247                          renew(30), 
248                          validate(31) 
249         } 
250         
251   The client should expect, when sending names with the "canonicalize" 
252   KDC option, that names in the KDC's reply will be different than the 
253   name in the request. 
254    
2556.1 Client Referrals 
256    
257   The simplest form of ticket referral is for a user requesting a 
258   ticket using an AS-REQ. In this case, the client machine will send 
259   the AS request to a convenient trusted realm, either the realm of 
260   the client machine or the realm of the client name. In the case of 
261   the name Alice@MS.COM, the client may optimistically choose to send 
262   the request to MS.COM. The realm in the AS request is always the 
263   name of the realm that the request is for as specified in [3]. 
264    
265   The client will send the string "alice@MS.COM" in the client 
266   principal name field using the KRB-NT-ENTERPRISE-PRINCIPAL name type 
267   with the crealm set to MS.COM. The KDC will try to lookup the name 
268   in its local account database. If the account is present in the 
269   realm of the request, it MUST return a KDC reply structure with the 
270   appropriate ticket. 
271    
272   If the account is not present in the realm specified in the request 
273   and the "canonicalize" KDC option is set, the KDC will try to lookup 
274   the entire name, Alice@MS.COM, using a name service. If this lookup 
275   is unsuccessful, it MUST return the error 
276   KDC_ERR_C_PRINCIPAL_UNKNOWN. If the lookup is successful, it MUST 
277   return an error KDC_ERR_WRONG_REALM (0x44) and in the error message 
278   the crealm field will contain the the true realm of the client or 
279   another realm that has better information about the client's true 
280   realm. The client MUST NOT use a cname returned from a referral. 
281    
282   If the KDC contains the account locally and "canonicalize" KDC 
283   option is not set, it MUST return a normal ticket. The client name 
284   and realm portions of the ticket and KDC reply message MUST be the 
285   client's true name in the realm, not the globally unique name. 
286    
287   If the client receives a KDC_ERR_WRONG_REALM error, it will issue a 
288   new AS request with the same client principal name used to generate 
289   the first referral to the realm specified by the realm field of the 
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294 
295   kerberos error message from the first request. This request MUST 
296   produce a valid AS response with a ticket for the canonical user 
297   name.  
298    
299   An implementation should limit the number of referrals that it 
300   processes to avoid infinite referral loops. A suggested limit is 5 
301   referrals before giving up. In Microsoft�s implementation the 
302   default limit is 3 since through the use of the global catalog any 
303   domain in one forest is reachable from any other domain in another 
304   trusting forest with 3 or less referrals.  
305    
3066.2 Service Referrals 
307    
308   The primary problem is that the KDC must return a referral ticket 
309   rather than an error message as is done in AS request referrals. 
310   There needs to be a place to include in the TGS response information 
311   about what realm contains the service. This is done by returning 
312   information about the service name in the pre-auth data field of the 
313   KDC reply. 
314    
315   If the KDC resolves the service principal name into a principal in 
316   the realm specified by the service realm name, it will return a 
317   normal ticket. When using canonicalization, the client can omit the 
318   service realm name. If it is supplied, it is used as a hint by the 
319   KDC, but the service principal lookup is not constrained to locating 
320   the service principal name in that specified realm. If the 
321   "canonicalize" flag in the KDC options is not set, then the KDC MUST 
322   only look up the name as a normal principal name in the specified 
323   service realm.  
324    
325   If the "canonicalize" flag in the KDC options is set and the KDC 
326   doesn't find the principal locally, the KDC can return a cross-realm 
327   ticket granting ticket to the next hop on the trust path towards a 
328   realm that may be able to resolve the principal name. 
329    
330   If the KDC can determine the service principal's realm, it SHOULD 
331   return the service realm as KDC supplied pre-authentication data 
332   element. The preauth data MUST be encrypted using the sub-session 
333   key from the authenticator if present or the session key from the 
334   ticket. 
335    
336   The data itself is an ASN.1 encoded structure containing the 
337   server's realm, and if known, the real principal name.  
338    
339                PA-SERVER-REFERRAL-INFO        25 
340                 
341                PA-SERVER-REFERRAL :: = KERB-ENCRYPTED-DATA  
342                                           -- PA-SERVER-REFERRAL-DATA 
343                 
344                PA-SERVER-REFERRAL-DATA ::= SEQUENCE { 
345                        referred-server-realm[0]  KERB-REALM 
346                        referred-name[1]         PrincipalName OPTIONAL 
347                        ... 
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352 
353                } 
354    
355    
356   If applicable to the encryption type, the key derivation value will 
357   for the PA-SERVER-REFERRAL is 22. 
358    
359   If the referred-name field is present, the client MUST use that name 
360   in a subsequent TGS request to the service realm when following the 
361   referral. 
362    
363   The client will use this information to request a chain of cross-
364   realm ticket granting tickets until it reaches the realm of the 
365   service, and can then expect to receive a valid service ticket.  
366    
367   However an implementation should limit the number of referrals that 
368   it processes to avoid infinite referral loops. A suggested limit is 
369   5 referrals before giving up. 
370    
371   This is an example of a client requesting a service ticket for a 
372   service in realm NT.MS.COM where the client is in OFFICE.MS.COM. 
373    
374        +NC = Canonicalize KDCOption set 
375        +PA-REFERRAL = returned PA-SERVER-REFERRAL-INFO 
376         
377        C: TGS-REQ sname=server/foo.nt.ms.com srealm=NULL +NC to 
378        OFFICE.MS.COM 
379        S: TGS-REP sname=krbtgt/MS.COM@OFFICE.MS.COM +PA-REFERRAL 
380        containing NT.MS.COM 
381        C: TGS-REQ sname=krbtgt/NT.MS.COM@MS.COM +NC to MS.COM 
382        S: TGS-REP sname=krbtgt/NT.MS.COM@MS.COM 
383        C: TGS-REQ sname=server/foo.nt.ms.com srealm=NT.MS.COM +NC to 
384        NT.MS.COM 
385        S: TGS-REP sname=server/foo.nt.ms.com@NT.MS.COM 
386    
387   Notice that the client only specifies the service name in the 
388   initial and final TGS request. 
389    
3907. Cross Realm Routing 
391    
392   The current Kerberos protocol requires the client to explicitly 
393   request a cross-realm TGT for each pair of realms on a referral 
394   chain. As a result, the client need to be aware of the trust 
395   hierarchy and of any short-cut trusts (those that aren't parent-
396   child trusts). Instead, the client should be able to request a TGT 
397   to the target realm from each realm on the route. The KDC will 
398   determine the best path for the client and return a cross-realm TGT. 
399   The client has to be aware that a request for a cross-realm TGT may 
400   return a TGT for a realm different from the one requested. 
401    
402   For compatibility, the client MUST use the "canonicalize" KDC option 
403   if it is able to use cross-realm routing from the KDC. 
404    
4058. Compatibility with earlier implementations of name canonicalization 
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410 
411    
412   The Microsoft Windows 2000 release included an earlier form of name-
413   canonicalization [4]. It has these differences: 
414    
415   1) The TGS referral data was returned inside of the KDC message as 
416      "encrypted pre auth data". 
417    
418                KERB-ENCRYPTED-KDC-REPLY ::=  SEQUENCE { 
419                        session-key[0]   KERB-ENCRYPTION-KEY, 
420                        last-request[1]  PKERB-LAST-REQUEST, 
421                        nonce[2]         INTEGER, 
422                        key-expiration[3] KERB-TIME OPTIONAL, 
423                        flags[4]         KERB-TICKET-FLAGS, 
424                        authtime[5]      KERB-TIME, 
425                        starttime[6]     KERB-TIME OPTIONAL, 
426                        endtime[7]       KERB-TIME, 
427                        renew-until[8]   KERB-TIME OPTIONAL, 
428                        server-realm[9]  KERB-REALM, 
429                        server-name[10]  KERB-PRINCIPAL-NAME, 
430                        client-addresses[11] PKERB-HOST-ADDRESSES 
431                OPTIONAL, 
432                        encrypted-pa-data[12] SEQUENCE OF KERB-PA-DATA 
433                OPTIONAL 
434                } 
435    
436   2) The preauth data type definition in the encrypted preauth data is 
437      as follows: 
438    
439                PA-SVR-REFERRAL-INFO        20 
440                 
441                PA-SVR-REFERRAL-DATA ::= SEQUENCE { 
442                        referred-server-name[1]  PrincipalName OPTIONAL 
443                        referred-server-realm[0] KERB-REALM 
444                } 
445    
446     
4479. Security Considerations 
448 
449   In the case of TGS requests the client may be vulnerable to a denial 
450   of service attack by an attacker that replays replies from previous 
451   requests. The client can verify that the request was one of its own 
452   by checking the client-address field or authtime field, though, so 
453   the damage is limited and detectable. Clients MUST NOT process cross 
454   realm referral TGTs if the KDC reply does not include the encrypted 
455   PA-SERVER-REFERRAL-INFO.  
456    
457   For the AS exchange case, it is important that the logon mechanism 
458   not trust a name that has not been used to authenticate the user. 
459   For example, the name that the user enters as part of a logon 
460   exchange may not be the name that the user authenticates as, given 
461   that the KDC_ERR_WRONG_REALM error may have been returned. The 
462   relevant Kerberos naming information for logon (if any), is the 
463
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468 
469   client name and client realm in the service ticket targeted at the 
470   workstation that was obtained using the user's initial TGT. 
471    
472   How the client name and client realm is mapped into a local account 
473   for logon is a local matter, but the client logon mechanism MUST use 
474   additional information such as the client realm and/or authorization 
475   attributes from the service ticket presented to the workstation by 
476   the user, when mapping the logon credentials to a local account on 
477   the workstation. 
478 
47910. Acknowledgements 
480   The authors wish to thank Ken Raeburn for his comments and 
481   suggestions.  
482 
48311.1 Normative References 
484    
485 
486   1  Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP 
487      9, RFC 2026, October 1996. 
488    
489   2  Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement 
490      Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997 
491    
492   3  Neuman, C., Kohl, J., Ts'o, T., Yu, T., Hartman, S., and K. 
493      Raeburn, "The Kerberos Network Authentication Service (V5)", 
494      draft-ietf-krb-wg-kerberos-clarifications-00.txt, February 22, 
495      2002.  Work in progress. 
496 
49711.2 Informative References 
498    
499    
500   4  J. Trostle, I. Kosinovsky, and M. Swift,"Implementation of 
501      Crossrealm Referral Handling in the MIT Kerberos Client", In 
502      Network and Distributed System Security Symposium, February 2001. 
503    
504    
50512. Author's Addresses 
506    
507   Karthik Jaganathan 
508   Microsoft 
509   One Microsoft Way 
510   Redmond, Washington 
511   Email: karthikj@Microsoft.com 
512    
513   Larry Zhu 
514   Microsoft 
515   One Microsoft Way 
516   Redmond, Washington 
517   Email: lzhu@Microsoft.com 
518    
519   Michael Swift 
520   University of Washington 
521  
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525 
526   Seattle, Washington 
527   Email: mikesw@cs.washington.edu 
528    
529   John Brezak 
530   Microsoft 
531   One Microsoft Way 
532   Redmond, Washington 
533   Email: jbrezak@Microsoft.com 
534    
535   Jonathan Trostle 
536   Cisco Systems 
537   170 W. Tasman Dr. 
538   San Jose, CA 95134 
539   Email: jtrostle@cisco.com 
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583 
584   Full Copyright Statement 
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