Overview—Hummingbird Connectivity Kerberos

Kerberos is a security authentication protocol developed at MIT. The protocol provides a secure means of communication between two parties across an insecure network. In general, the communication is between a user and a remote service.

To communicate securely, each party proves its identity to the other using a pair of encrypted credentials that a third party, the Kerberos service, generates through symmetric cryptography. In effect, each party serves as the other's authentication agent. Only the user, remote service, and Kerberos service know the keys necessary to decrypt the credentials. The protocol, therefore, prevents a third party from impersonating either of the original parties.