short kerberos intro page

git-svn-id: svn://svn.h5l.se/heimdal/trunk/heimdal@9019 ec53bebd-3082-4978-b11e-865c3cabbd6b

lib/krb5/kerberos.8

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+.\" $Id$
+.\"
+.Dd September 1, 2000
+.Dt KERBEROS 8
+.Os HEIMDAL
+.Sh NAME
+.Nm kerberos
+.Nd introduction to the Kerberos system
+.Sh DESCRIPTION
+Kerberos is a network authentication system. It's purpose is to
+securely authenticate users and services in an insecure network
+environment. 
+.Pp
+This is done with a Kerberos server acting as a trusted third party,
+keeping a database with secret keys for all users and services
+(collectively called
+.Em principals ) .
+.Pp
+Each principal belongs to exactly one 
+.Em realm ,
+which is the administrative domain in Kerberos. A realm usually
+corresponds to an organisation, and the realm should normally be
+derived from that organisation's domain name. A realm is served by one
+or more Kerberos servers.
+.Pp
+The authentication process involves exchange of
+.Sq tickets
+and 
+.Sq authenticators 
+which together prove the principal's identity.
+.Pp
+When you login to the Kerberos system, either through the normal
+system login or with the
+.Xr kinit 1
+program, you acquire a 
+.Em ticket granting ticket
+which allows you to get new tickets for other services, such as
+.Ic telnet
+or
+.Ic ftp ,
+without giving your password.
+.Pp
+For more information on how Kerberos works, and other general Kerberos
+questions see the Kerberos FAQ at
+.Ad http://www.nrl.navy.mil/CCS/people/kenh/kerberos-faq.html .
+
+For setup instructions see the Heimdal Texinfo manual.
+.Sh SEE ALSO
+.Xr ftp 1
+.Xr kdestroy 1 ,
+.Xr kinit 1 ,
+.Xr klist 1 ,
+.Xr kpasswd 1 ,
+.Xr telnet 1
+.Sh HISTORY
+The Kerberos authentication system was developed in the late 1980's as
+part of the Athena Project at the Massachusetts Institute of
+Technology. Versions one through three never reached outside MIT, but
+version 4 was (and still is) quite popular, especially in the academic
+community, but is also used in commercial products like the AFS
+filesystem.
+.Pp
+The problems with version 4 are that it has many limitations, the code
+was not too well written (since it had been developed over a long
+time), and it has a number of known security problems. To resolve many
+of these issues work on version five started, and resulted in IETF
+RFC1510 in 1993. Since then much work has been put into the further
+development, and a new RFC will hopefully appear soon.
+.Pp
+This manual manual page is part of the
+.Nm Heimdal
+Kerberos 5 distribution, which has been in development at the Royal
+Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, since about 1997.