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Date:      Fri, 3 Apr 1998 02:02:49 -0500 (EST)
From:      Robert Watson <robert@cyrus.watson.org>
To:        Mark Murray <mark@grondar.za>
Cc:        Narvi <narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee>, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Is there a safe way for filesystem export? 
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.980403015815.21311R-100000@fledge.watson.org>
In-Reply-To: <199804030634.IAA00305@greenpeace.grondar.za>

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On Fri, 3 Apr 1998, Mark Murray wrote:

> > I think there is an option to NFS to use kerberos tickets to authenticate
> > users/user actions. 
> 
> The option is there, but the Kerberos code to do it is incomplete.

Distributed file systems such as AFS, DFS, and Coda can make use of
Kerberos (in various ways) to authenticate user operations with Kerberos.
I know that AFS and Coda both maintain a pool of authenticated connections
per user on a client host, and the server verifies that operations come
over authenticated connections.  AFS and DFS are, of course, commercial
products, and are probably far higher-overhead than what you are looking
for (they are *not* equivilent to NFS in behavior -- closed servers and
all :).

Coda is freely available (ports exist for FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux, and
Mach), but is still under development.  The Kerberos code is not currently
integrated into the main distribution available for download, but should
be in there within a version or so.  I am currently making protocol-level
changes to the RPC package used by Coda, and we have not tested it fully.
Coda is also not a drop-in replacement for NFS, as it is also designed
with dedicated servers, etc, in mind.

AFS and DFS are available from Transarc, http://www.transarc.com/
Coda is an ongoing research project at Carnegie Mellon University,
http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/

None of this is immediately related to NFS and Kerberos, however. :)  To
secure NFS between my hosts (which trust each other), I use a combination
of private networks, secure IP tunneling using custom softare and SKIP,
and packet filters.  I'd rather use Coda, but it is not yet sufficiently
stable to use in a production environment.

  Robert N Watson 


----
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Trusted Information Systems http://www.tis.com/
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