Improving Kerberos Security System for Cross-Realm Collaborative Interactions: An Innovative Example of Knowledge Technology for Evolving & Verifiable E-Society

In this paper, we clarify the role of authentication systems as building blocks for Knowledge Technologies that constitutes the basis of an evolvable and trustworthy e-society. Such frameworks support the trustworthy cross-realm collaboration and user-friendly service provision through proper measures of authentication, privacy, integrity and secrecy of information. We define the requirements that such authentication systems must fulfill. Then, we present Kerberos as a candidate. We overview the basic operations and the cross-realm authentication model of Kerberos. Then we present the XKDCP extension as a solution for scalability and reliability issues in Kerberos cross-realm operations. With the proposed enhancements, we have achieved our goal on selecting an authentication system that matches the requirements for evolvable and verifiable e-society.