1 Kerberos Working Group Karthik Jaganathan
2 Internet Draft Larry Zhu
3 Document: draft-ietf-krb-wg-kerberos-referrals-04.txt John Brezak
4 Category: Standards Track Microsoft
6 University of Washington
12 Generating KDC Referrals to locate Kerberos realms
18 This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with
19 all provisions of Section 10 of RFC-2026 [1].
22 Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
23 Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other
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25 Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months
26 and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any
27 time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference
28 material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
31 The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at
32 http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-
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34 http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html.
40 The draft documents a method for a Kerberos Key Distribution Center
41 (KDC) to respond to client requests for Kerberos tickets when the
42 client does not have detailed configuration information on the realms
43 of users or services. The KDC will handle requests for principals in
44 other realms by returning either a referral error or a cross-realm
45 TGT to another realm on the referral path. The clients will use this
46 referral information to reach the realm of the target principal and
47 then receive the ticket.
50 Conventions used in this document
53 The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
54 "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
55 document are to be interpreted as described in RFC-2119 [2].
70 KDC Referrals January 2005
74 Current implementations of the Kerberos AS and TGS protocols, as
75 defined in [3], use principal names constructed from a known user or
76 service name and realm. A service name is typically constructed from
77 a name of the service and the DNS host name of the computer that is
78 providing the service. Many existing deployments of Kerberos use a
79 single Kerberos realm where all users and services would be using the
80 same realm. However in an environment where there are multiple
81 trusted Kerberos realms, the client needs to be able to determine
82 what realm a particular user or service is in before making an AS or
83 TGS request. Traditionally this requires client configuration to make
87 When having to deal with multiple trusted realms, users are forced to
88 know what realm they are in before they can obtain a ticket granting
89 ticket (TGT) with an AS request. However, in many cases the user
90 would like to use a more familiar name that is not directly related
91 to the realm of their Kerberos principal name. A good example of this
92 is an RFC-821 style email name [4]. This document describes a
93 mechanism that would allow a user to specify a user principal name
94 that is an alias for the user's Kerberos principal name. In practice
95 this would be the name that the user specifies to obtain a TGT from a
96 Kerberos KDC. The user principal name no longer has a direct
97 relationship with the Kerberos principal or realm. Thus the
98 administrator is able to move the user's principal to other realms
99 without the user having to know that it happened.
102 Once a user has a TGT, they would like to be able to access services
103 in any trusted Kerberos realm. To do this requires that the client be
104 able to determine what realm the target service principal is in
105 before making the TGS request. Current implementations of Kerberos
106 typically have a table that maps DNS host names to corresponding
107 Kerberos realms. In order for this to work on the client, each
108 application canonicalizes the host name of the service, for example
109 by doing a DNS lookup followed by a reverse lookup using the returned
110 IP address. The returned primary host name is then used in the
111 construction of the principal name for the target service. In order
112 for the correct realm to be added for the target host, the mapping
113 table [domain_to_realm] is consulted for the realm corresponding to
114 the DNS host name. The corresponding realm is then used to complete
115 the target service principal name.
118 This traditional mechanism requires that each client have very
119 detailed configuration information about the hosts that are providing
120 services and their corresponding realms. Having client side
121 configuration information can be very costly from an administration
122 point of view - especially if there are many realms and computers in
136 KDC Referrals January 2005
140 There are also cases where specific DNS aliases (local names) have
141 been setup in an organization to refer to a server in another
142 organization (remote server). The server has different DNS names in
143 each organization and each organization has a Kerberos realm that is
144 configured to service DNS names within that organization. Ideally
145 users are able to authenticate to the server in the other
146 organization using the local server name. This would mean that the
147 local realm be able to produce a ticket to the remote server under
148 its name. You could give that remote server an identity in the local
149 realm and then have that remote server maintain a separate secret for
150 each alias it is known as. Alternatively you could arrange to have
151 the local realm issue a referral to the remote realm and notify the
152 requesting client of the server's remote name that should be used in
153 order to request a ticket.
156 This draft proposes a solution for these problems and simplifies
157 administration by minimizing the configuration information needed on
158 each computer using Kerberos. Specifically it describes a mechanism
159 to allow the KDC to handle canonicalization of names, provide for
160 principal aliases for users and services and provide a mechanism for
161 the KDC to determine the trusted realm authentication path by being
162 able to generate referrals to other realms in order to locate
166 To rectify these problems, this draft introduces three new kinds of
170 1. AS ticket referrals, in which the client doesn't know which realm
171 contains a user account.
172 2. TGS ticket referrals, in which the client doesn't know which realm
173 contains a server account.
174 3. Cross realm shortcut referrals, in which the KDC chooses the next
175 path on a referral chain
178 2. Requesting a referral
181 In order to request referrals defined in section 5, 6, and 7, the
182 Kerberos client MUST explicitly request the canonicalize KDC option
183 (bit 15) [3] for the AS-REQ or TGS-REQ. This flag indicates to the
184 KDC that the client is prepared to receive a reply that contains a
185 principal name other than the one requested.
188 KDCOptions ::= KerberosFlags
190 -- other KDCOptions values omitted
193 The client should expect, when sending names with the "canonicalize"
194 KDC option, that names in the KDC's reply MAY be different than the
206 KDC Referrals January 2005
210 name in the request. A referral ticket is a cross realm TGT that is
211 returned when the sname of the ticket is not the sname in the request
215 3. Realm Organization Model
218 This draft assumes that the world of principals is arranged on
219 multiple levels: the realm, the enterprise, and the world. A KDC may
220 issue tickets for any principal in its realm or cross-realm tickets
221 for realms with which it has a direct trust relationship. The KDC
222 also has access to a trusted name service that can resolve any name
223 from within its enterprise into a realm. This trusted name service
224 removes the need to use an un-trusted DNS lookup for name resolution.
227 For example, consider the following configuration, where lines
228 indicate trust relationships:
235 OFFICE.MS.COM NTDEV.MS.COM
239 In this configuration, all users in the MS.COM enterprise could have
240 a principal name such as alice@MS.COM, with the same realm portion.
241 In addition, servers at MS.COM should be able to have DNS host names
242 from any DNS domain independent of what Kerberos realm their
243 principals reside in.
246 4. Client Name Canonicalization
249 A client account may have multiple principal names. More useful,
250 though, is a globally unique name that allows unification of email
251 and security principal names. For example, all users at MS may have a
252 client principal name of the form "joe@MS.COM" even though the
253 principals are contained in multiple realms. This global name is
254 again an alias for the true client principal name, which indicates
255 what realm contains the principal. Thus, accounts "alice" in the
256 realm NTDEV.MS.COM and "bob" in OFFICE.MS.COM may logon as
257 "alice@MS.COM" and "bob@MS.COM".
260 This utilizes a new client principal name type, as the AS-REQ message
261 only contains a single realm field, and the realm portion of this
262 name doesn't correspond to any Kerberos realm. Thus, the entire name
263 "alice@MS.COM" is transmitted as a single component in the client
264 name field of the AS-REQ message, with a name type of NT-ENTERPRISE
265 [3]. The KDC will recognize this name type and then transform the
277 KDC Referrals January 2005
281 requested name into the true principal name. The true principal name
282 can be using a name type different from the requested name type.
283 Typically the true principal name will be a NT-PRINCIPAL [3].
286 If the "canonicalize" KDC option is set, then the KDC MAY change the
287 client principal name and type in the AS response and ticket returned
288 from the name type of the client name in the request. For example the
289 AS request may specify a client name of "bob@MS.COM" as an NT-
290 PRINCIPAL with the "canonicalize" KDC option set and the KDC will
291 return with a client name of "104567" as a NT-UID.
297 The simplest form of ticket referral is for a user requesting a
298 ticket using an AS-REQ. In this case, the client machine will send
299 the AS-REQ to a convenient trusted realm, for example the realm of
300 the client machine. In the case of the name alice@MS.COM, the client
301 MAY optimistically choose to send the request to MS.COM. The realm in
302 the AS-REQ is always the name of the realm that the request is for as
306 The KDC will try to lookup the name in its local account database. If
307 the account is present in the realm of the request, it SHOULD return
308 a KDC reply structure with the appropriate ticket.
311 If the account is not present in the realm specified in the request
312 and the "canonicalize" KDC option is set, the KDC will try to lookup
313 the entire name, alice@MS.COM, using a name service. If this lookup
314 is unsuccessful, it MUST return the error KDC_ERR_C_PRINCIPAL_UNKNOWN
315 [3]. If the lookup is successful, it MUST return an error
316 KDC_ERR_WRONG_REALM [3] and in the error message the crealm field
317 will contain either the true realm of the client or another realm
318 that MAY have better information about the client's true realm. The
319 client MUST NOT use a cname returned from a referral.
322 If the client receives a KDC_ERR_WRONG_REALM error, it will issue a
323 new AS request with the same client principal name used to generate
324 the first referral to the realm specified by the realm field of the
325 Kerberos error message from the first request. The client SHOULD
326 repeat these steps until it finds the true realm of the client. To
327 avoid infinite referral loops, an implementation should limit the
328 number of referrals. A suggested limit is 5 referrals before giving
329 up. In Microsoft's current implementation through the use of global
330 catalogs any domain in one forest is reachable from any other domain
331 in the same forest or another trusted forest with 3 or less
347 KDC Referrals January 2005
351 The primary problem in service referrals is that the KDC must return
352 a referral ticket rather than an error message as is done in AS
353 ticket referrals. There needs to be a place to include in the TGS-REP
354 information about what realm contains the service. This is done by
355 returning information about the service name in the pre-
356 authentication data field of the KDC reply [3].
359 If the KDC resolves the service principal name into a principal in
360 the realm specified by the service realm name, it will return a
364 If the "canonicalize" flag in the KDC options is not set, the KDC
365 MUST only look up the name as a normal principal name in the
366 specified service realm. If the "canonicalize" flag in the KDC
367 options is set and the KDC doesn't find the principal locally, the
368 KDC MAY return a cross-realm ticket granting ticket to the next hop
369 on the trust path towards a realm that may be able to resolve the
373 When a referral TGT is returned, the KDC MUST return the target realm
374 for the referral TGT as an KDC supplied pre-authentication data
375 element in the response. The pre-authentication data MUST be
376 encrypted using the sub-session key from the authenticator if present
377 or the session key from the ticket. The pre-authentication data
378 contains the referred realm, and if known, the real principal name.
381 PA-SERVER-REFERRAL 25
384 PA-SERVER-REFERRAL-DATA ::= EncryptedData
385 -- ServerReferalData --
388 ServerReferralData ::= SEQUENCE {
389 referred-realm [0] Realm,
390 -- target realm of the referral TGT
391 referred-name [1] PrincipalName OPTIONAL,
392 -- service principal name, MAY differ
393 -- from the server name in the request
398 Clients MUST NOT process referral tickets if the KDC response does
399 not contain the PA-SERVER-REFERRAL.
402 If applicable to the encryption type, the key usage value for the
403 encryption key used by PA-SERVER-REFERRAL is 26 if the session key
404 from the ticket is used or 27 if a sub-session key is used.
407 If the referred-name field is present, the client MUST use that name
419 KDC Referrals January 2005
423 in a subsequent TGS request to the service realm when following the
427 The client will use this information to request a chain of cross-
428 realm ticket granting tickets until it reaches the realm of the
429 service, and can then expect to receive a valid service ticket.
430 However an implementation should limit the number of referrals that
431 it processes to avoid infinite referral loops. A suggested limit is 5
432 referrals before giving up.
435 Here is an example of a client requesting a service ticket for a
436 service in realm NTDEV.MS.COM where the client is in OFFICE.MS.COM.
439 +NC = Canonicalize KDCOption set
440 +PA-REFERRAL = returned PA-SERVER-REFERRAL
441 C: TGS-REQ sname=server/foo.ntdev.ms.com +NC to OFFICE.MS.COM
442 S: TGS-REP sname=krbtgt/MS.COM@OFFICE.MS.COM +PA-REFERRAL
443 containing MS.COM as the referred realm with no referred name
444 C: TGS-REQ sname=server/foo.ntdev.ms.com +NC to MS.COM
445 S: TGS-REP sname=krbtgt/NTDEV.MS.COM@MS.COM +PA-REFERRAL
446 containing NTDEV.MS.COM as the referred realm with no referred
448 C: TGS-REQ sname=server/foo.ntdev.ms.com +NC to NTDEV.MS.COM
449 S: TGS-REP sname=server/foo.ntdev.ms.com@NTDEV.MS.COM
452 7. Cross Realm Routing
455 The current Kerberos protocol requires the client to explicitly
456 request a cross-realm TGT for each pair of realms on a referral
457 chain. As a result, the client need to be aware of the trust
458 hierarchy and of any short-cut trusts (those that aren't parent-
462 Instead, using this referral routing mechanism, The KDC will
463 determine the best path for the client and return a cross-realm TGT
464 as the referral TGT, and the target realm for this TGT in the PA-
465 SERVER-REFERRAL of the KDC reply.
468 If the "canonicalize" KDC option is not set, the KDC MUST NOT return
469 a referral ticket. Clients MUST NOT process referral tickets if the
470 KDC response does not contain the PA-SERVER-REFERRAL.
473 8. Compatibility with earlier implementations of name canonicalization
476 The Microsoft Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 releases included an
477 earlier form of name-canonicalization [5]. Here are the differences:
480 1) The TGS referral data is returned inside of the KDC message as
492 KDC Referrals January 2005
496 "encrypted pre-authentication data".
499 EncKDCRepPart ::= SEQUENCE {
500 key [0] EncryptionKey,
501 last-req [1] LastReq,
503 key-expiration [3] KerberosTime OPTIONAL,
504 flags [4] TicketFlags,
505 authtime [5] KerberosTime,
506 starttime [6] KerberosTime OPTIONAL,
507 endtime [7] KerberosTime,
508 renew-till [8] KerberosTime OPTIONAL,
510 sname [10] PrincipalName,
511 caddr [11] HostAddresses OPTIONAL,
512 encrypted-pa-data [12] SEQUENCE OF PA-DATA OPTIONAL
516 2) The preauth data type definition in the encrypted preauth data is
520 PA-SVR-REFERRAL-INFO 20
523 PA-SVR-REFERRAL-DATA ::= SEQUENCE {
524 referred-name [1] PrincipalName OPTIONAL,
525 referred-realm [0] Realm
529 9. Security Considerations
532 In the case of TGS requests the client may be vulnerable to a denial
533 of service attack by an attacker that replays replies from previous
534 requests. The client can verify that the request was one of its own
535 by checking the client-address field or authtime field, though, so
536 the damage is limited and detectable.
539 For the AS exchange case, it is important that the logon mechanism
540 not trust a name that has not been used to authenticate the user.
541 For example, the name that the user enters as part of a logon
542 exchange may not be the name that the user authenticates as, given
543 that the KDC_ERR_WRONG_REALM error may have been returned. The
544 relevant Kerberos naming information for logon (if any), is the
545 client name and client realm in the service ticket targeted at the
546 workstation that was obtained using the user's initial TGT.
549 How the client name and client realm is mapped into a local account
550 for logon is a local matter, but the client logon mechanism MUST use
551 additional information such as the client realm and/or authorization
563 KDC Referrals January 2005
567 attributes from the service ticket presented to the workstation by
568 the user, when mapping the logon credentials to a local account on
575 The authors wish to thank Ken Raeburn for his comments and
582 11.1 Normative References
585 [1] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP
586 9, RFC 2026, October 1996.
589 [2] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
590 Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
593 [3] Neuman, C., Yu, T., Hartman, S., and K. Raeburn, "The Kerberos
594 Network Authentication Service (V5)", draft-ietf-krb-wg-kerberos-
595 clarifications. Work in progress.
598 [4] Postel, J., "Simple Mail Transfer Protocol", RFC 821, August
602 11.2 Informative References
605 [5] Trostle, J., Kosinovsky, I., and Swift, M., "Implementation of
606 Crossrealm Referral Handling in the MIT Kerberos Client", In Network
607 and Distributed System Security Symposium, February 2001.
610 12. Author's Addresses
617 Email: karthikj@Microsoft.com
624 Email: lzhu@Microsoft.com
628 University of Washington
640 KDC Referrals January 2005
645 Email: mikesw@cs.washington.edu
652 Email: jbrezak@Microsoft.com
659 Email: jtrostle@cisco.com
705 KDC Referrals January 2005
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