Kerberos is a secret key based service for providing authentication in a
network.
• Kerberos is a network authentication protocol. It is designed to
provide strong authentication for client/server applications by using
secret-key cryptography.
• Kerberos is designed on the assumption that two parties want to
communicate via insecure network, like the Internet.
• Both parties can authenticate each other without revealing any secret.
• The Kerberos protocol uses strong cryptography so that a client can
prove its identity to a server (and vice versa) across an insecure
network connection. After a client and server has used Kerberos to
prove their identity, they can also encrypt all of their communications
to assure privacy and data integrity as they go about their business.