A browser-based Kerberos authentication scheme

Abstract

When two players wish to share a security token (e.g., for the purpose of authentication and accounting), they call a trusted third party. This idea is the essence of Kerberos protocols, which are widely deployed in a large scale of computer networks. Browser-based Kerberos protocols are the derivates with the exception that the Kerberos client application is a commodity Web browser. Whereas the native Kerberos protocol has been repeatedly peer-reviewed without finding flaws, the history of browser-based Kerberos protocols is tarnished with negative results due to the fact that subtleties of browsers have been disregarded. We propose a browser-based Kerberos protocol based on client certificates and prove its security in the extended formal model for browser-based mutual authentication introduced at ACM ASIACCS'08. © 2008 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.