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Date: Mon, 17 Mar 1997 01:09:10 -0600
From: john@dexter.starfire.mn.org (John Lind)
To: questions@freebsd.org
Subject: Instead of NIS -- what?
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We have fallen prey to the inherent security flaw in NIS -- that the
encrypted passwords CAN be gotten (and then hacked at by the means
of choice).

Is there an alternative for providing multi-host authentication?
That is, to share a password database?  I thought that Kerberos
was such, until I started reading the documentation on it, which
now sounds otherwise.

Can someone please help straigten me out on this?  I check the handbook,
and while it gives pretty good cook-book examples of how to set it up,
it pretty much skips the how and why (suitability, why you do or do not
want it, strengths and weaknesses, etc).  I checked the main kerberos
web pages and documents, and they almost make it sounds like this is
not a suitable use of kerberos, or at least that kerberos in and
of itself doesn't provide this functionality.

Please reply directly, as I do not subscribe to this list.  Thanks!

		 John Lind, Starfire Consulting Services
E-mail: john@starfire.MN.ORG	    USnail: PO Box 17247, Mpls MN  55417