Authentication of Clients in a C/S environment

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#152

From: Stephen M. Deal
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 03:23

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One major implication of distributed processing (of which C/S is but one manifestation) is that of authentication.

Example: I have a Benefits database for a company of 100k employees. How can I enable each employee to review their benefits without giving each employee an account on the server machine?

How do you authorize a client? Can you even trust a client? Perhaps those clients executing on a node that has password protection (e.g. UNIX, VAX/VMS) can be trusted but what about single tasking nodes that run a Disk Operating System (a.k.a. DOS)?

Will a user on a untrustworthy client have to log in to every server to which they make a request? :-(

Kerberos (from MIT's Project Athena) provides a glimmer of hope but I have not seen any C/S vendor embrace this approach.

Has anyone given much thought to client authentication on PCs and Macs? Does anyone have any thoughts on how a server (DB  or otherwise) would handle such a mechanism?

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    Disclaimer:	"Everyone is entitled to an opinion, 
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Newsgroups: comp.client-server
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!newsserver.pixel.kodak.com!kodak!tempus!deal
From: deal@tempus.Kodak.Com (Stephen M. Deal)
Subject: Authentication of Clients in a C/S environment
Message-ID: <1992Nov20.032345.18307@kodak.kodak.com>
Keywords: Kerberos, Trusted Hosts, Food for Thought
Sender: deal@tempus (Stephen M. Deal)
Reply-To: deal@Kodak.COM
Organization: Eastman Kodak Company
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 92 03:23:45 GMT
Lines: 24