The MIT Kerberos Consortium in the News
Email Sign-up for Announcements
The Official Launch of the MIT Kerberos Consortium
A Note from Clifford Neuman

The MIT Kerberos Consortium provides a neutral environment where interoperability and functionality issues of concern to the wider Kerberos community can be addressed.

Official Launch of the MIT Kerberos Consortium

The MIT Kerberos Consortium
Stephen C. Buckley
Executive Director
77 Massachusetts Avenue
W92-159
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
tel: 617-324-9167
email: sbuckley@mit.edu

--->View the Webcast of the Launch Event <--- (Requires Real Player | Help)

MIT Launches Kerberos Consortium

Will build on MIT strengths and technologies to seek new solutions for protecting consumers and mobile devices.
Kerberos

Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 27 - MIT today announced the launch of the Kerberos Consortium, embarking on an ambitious mission to create a universal authentication platform to protect the world's computer networks.

MIT also announced today that Centrify Corporation, the Financial Services Technology Consortium, Google, Stanford University, Sun Microsystems, TeamF1, and the University of Michigan are founding sponsors of the Consortium. The Consortium also will receive generous support from Apple.

Kerberos is a network authentication protocol, originally developed for MIT's Project Athena in the 1980s. Over the past two decades, it has grown to become the most widely deployed system for authentication and authorization in modern computer networks. However, it is currently mostly available only in large corporate networks. Kerberos' ability to require strong mutual authentication has enormous potential to protect consumers doing business on the public Internet from phishing and other types of attacks.

"By establishing the Kerberos Consortium, MIT seeks to permit Kerberos to continue to grow and develop as a stable and universal 'single sign-on' mechanism for the users of modern computer networks," said Stephen Buckley, executive director of the Kerberos Consortium. "The Consortium will provide a mechanism to permit greater industry participation in the funding and development of Kerberos, and thus allow it to evolve into the universal 'single sign-on mechanism' users need but do not yet have."

"We foresee a day when Kerberos-based authentication and authorization will be as ubiquitous as TCP/IP-based networking itself," said Sam Hartman, chief technologist for the Kerberos Consortium. "We want to make Kerberos more useful and available than ever before."

As an example, Hartman noted that if Kerberos were available on mobile devices, it would be more attractive in the health care industry as a mechanism for securing privacy of health records. If made available for consumers, it could make electronic commerce less susceptible to phishing and identity theft.

"We see a number of our customers asking for open source, stable and interoperable single-sign on technology, based on the Kerberos protocol" said Kathy Jenks, Director, Sun Microsystems. "The MIT Kerberos Consortium is an outstanding way to address our customers' requirements. It's also a continuation of the work we have been doing within the Kerberos community over the last several years, including contribution of key technologies such as SPNEGO and LDAP-based Kerberos data storage."

"The bright future for Kerberos depends on our ability to standardize the technologies layered above Kerberos -- hence the need for an organization like the Kerberos Consortium," said Clifford Neuman, director of the USC Center for Computer Systems Security, and the original principal designer of Kerberos. "I am delighted to see industry, academia, and the business community coming together to promote the growth of Kerberos into new areas."

The Consortium will perform software development and the documentation activities necessary to achieve its goal of ubiquitous support for Kerberos-based single sign-on solutions across all aspects of the world's communication infrastructure.

A primary objective of the Consortium is to implement the solutions it promotes in the form of open source reference implementations that can be used by Consortium members within their products and organizations without licensing fees.

About MIT Kerberos Consortium
The MIT Kerberos Consortium was created to establish Kerberos as the universal authentication platform for the world's computer networks. Building upon the existing Kerberos protocol suite, the Consortium will develop interoperable technologies to enable organizations and federated realms of organizations to use Kerberos as the single sign-on solution for access to all applications and services. It will also promote the adoption of these technologies so that ultimately all operating systems, applications, imbedded devices, and Internet based services can utilize Kerberos for authentication and authorization.
For More Information Contact
Stephen C. Buckley
Executive Director
MIT Kerberos Consortium
1 617.324.9167
sbuckley@mit.edu

	The MIT Kerberos Consortium in the News Email Sign-up for Announcements The Official Launch of the MIT Kerberos Consortium A Note from Clifford Neuman The MIT Kerberos Consortium provides a neutral environment where interoperability and functionality issues of concern to the wider Kerberos community can be addressed.	Official Launch of the MIT Kerberos Consortium The MIT Kerberos Consortium Stephen C. Buckley Executive Director 77 Massachusetts Avenue W92-159 Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 tel: 617-324-9167 email: sbuckley@mit.edu --->View the Webcast of the Launch Event <--- (Requires Real Player \| Help) MIT Launches Kerberos Consortium Will build on MIT strengths and technologies to seek new solutions for protecting consumers and mobile devices. Kerberos Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 27 - MIT today announced the launch of the Kerberos Consortium, embarking on an ambitious mission to create a universal authentication platform to protect the world's computer networks. MIT also announced today that Centrify Corporation, the Financial Services Technology Consortium, Google, Stanford University, Sun Microsystems, TeamF1, and the University of Michigan are founding sponsors of the Consortium. The Consortium also will receive generous support from Apple. Kerberos is a network authentication protocol, originally developed for MIT's Project Athena in the 1980s. Over the past two decades, it has grown to become the most widely deployed system for authentication and authorization in modern computer networks. However, it is currently mostly available only in large corporate networks. Kerberos' ability to require strong mutual authentication has enormous potential to protect consumers doing business on the public Internet from phishing and other types of attacks. "By establishing the Kerberos Consortium, MIT seeks to permit Kerberos to continue to grow and develop as a stable and universal 'single sign-on' mechanism for the users of modern computer networks," said Stephen Buckley, executive director of the Kerberos Consortium. "The Consortium will provide a mechanism to permit greater industry participation in the funding and development of Kerberos, and thus allow it to evolve into the universal 'single sign-on mechanism' users need but do not yet have." "We foresee a day when Kerberos-based authentication and authorization will be as ubiquitous as TCP/IP-based networking itself," said Sam Hartman, chief technologist for the Kerberos Consortium. "We want to make Kerberos more useful and available than ever before." As an example, Hartman noted that if Kerberos were available on mobile devices, it would be more attractive in the health care industry as a mechanism for securing privacy of health records. If made available for consumers, it could make electronic commerce less susceptible to phishing and identity theft. "We see a number of our customers asking for open source, stable and interoperable single-sign on technology, based on the Kerberos protocol" said Kathy Jenks, Director, Sun Microsystems. "The MIT Kerberos Consortium is an outstanding way to address our customers' requirements. It's also a continuation of the work we have been doing within the Kerberos community over the last several years, including contribution of key technologies such as SPNEGO and LDAP-based Kerberos data storage." "The bright future for Kerberos depends on our ability to standardize the technologies layered above Kerberos -- hence the need for an organization like the Kerberos Consortium," said Clifford Neuman, director of the USC Center for Computer Systems Security, and the original principal designer of Kerberos. "I am delighted to see industry, academia, and the business community coming together to promote the growth of Kerberos into new areas." The Consortium will perform software development and the documentation activities necessary to achieve its goal of ubiquitous support for Kerberos-based single sign-on solutions across all aspects of the world's communication infrastructure. A primary objective of the Consortium is to implement the solutions it promotes in the form of open source reference implementations that can be used by Consortium members within their products and organizations without licensing fees. About MIT Kerberos Consortium The MIT Kerberos Consortium was created to establish Kerberos as the universal authentication platform for the world's computer networks. Building upon the existing Kerberos protocol suite, the Consortium will develop interoperable technologies to enable organizations and federated realms of organizations to use Kerberos as the single sign-on solution for access to all applications and services. It will also promote the adoption of these technologies so that ultimately all operating systems, applications, imbedded devices, and Internet based services can utilize Kerberos for authentication and authorization. For More Information Contact Stephen C. Buckley Executive Director MIT Kerberos Consortium 1 617.324.9167 sbuckley@mit.edu