Secure RPC

Sun Microsystems calls the authentication mechanism, used in their Secure RPC service, DES Authentication. ``The security of DES authentication is based on the sender's ability to encrypt the current time, which the receiver can then decrypt and check against its own clock. The timestamp is encrypted with DES. Two things are necessary for this scheme to work:

1. the two agents must agree on what the current time is, and
2. the sender and receiver must be using the same encryption key.''[SUN90b,p.429]

• The Protocol Used to Verify the Authentication
• The Principals
• The Areas of the Network Where Trust is Placed
• The Areas of the Network Where Secrets are Kept
• Key Generation and Distribution Model Used
• The Composition of the Ticket/Certificate