3 @node Things in search for a better place, Kerberos 4 issues, Applications, Top
4 @chapter Things in search for a better place
6 @section Making things work on Ciscos
8 Modern versions of Cisco IOS has some support for authenticating via
9 Kerberos 5. This can be used both by having the router get a ticket when
10 you login (boring), and by using Kerberos authenticated telnet to access
11 your router (less boring). The following has been tested on IOS
12 11.2(12), things might be different with other versions. Old versions
13 are known to have bugs.
15 To make this work, you will first have to configure your router to use
16 Kerberos (this is explained in the documentation). A sample
17 configuration looks like the following:
21 aaa authentication login default krb5-telnet krb5 enable
22 aaa authorization exec krb5-instance
23 kerberos local-realm FOO.SE
24 kerberos srvtab entry host/router.foo.se 0 891725446 4 1 8 012345678901234567
25 kerberos server FOO.SE 10.0.0.1
26 kerberos instance map admin 15
29 This tells you (among other things) that when logging in, the router
30 should try to authenticate with kerberised telnet, and if that fails try
31 to verify a plain text password via a Kerberos ticket exchange (as
32 opposed to a local database, RADIUS or something similar), and if that
33 fails try the local enable password. If you're not careful when you
34 specify the `login default' authentication mechanism, you might not be
35 able to login at all. The `instance map' and `authorization exec' lines
36 says that people with `admin' instances should be given `enabled' shells
39 The numbers after the principal on the `srvtab' line are principal type,
40 time stamp (in seconds since 1970), key version number (4), keytype (1 ==
41 des), key length (always 8 with des), and then the key.
43 To make the Heimdal KDC produce tickets that the Cisco can decode you
44 might have to turn on the @samp{encode_as_rep_as_tgs_rep} flag in the
45 KDC. You will also have to specify that the router can't handle anything
46 but @samp{des-cbc-crc}. This can be done with the @samp{del_enctype}
47 command of @samp{kadmin}.
49 This all fine and so, but unless you have an IOS version with encryption
50 (available only in the U.S) it doesn't really solve any problems. Sure
51 you don't have to send your password over the wire, but since the telnet
52 connection isn't protected it's still possible for someone to steal your
53 session. This won't be fixed until someone adds integrity to the telnet
56 A working solution would be to hook up a machine with a real operating
57 system to the console of the Cisco and then use it as a backwards