2.5. Proxiable and Proxy Tickets

2.5. Proxiable and Proxy Tickets

At times it may be necessary for a principal to allow a service to perform an operation on its behalf. The service must be able to take on the identity of the client, but only for a particular purpose. A principal can allow a service to do this by granting it a proxy.

The process of granting a proxy by using the proxy and proxiable flags is used to provide credentials for use with specific services. Though conceptually also a proxy, users wishing to delegate their identity in a form usable for all purposes MUST use the ticket forwarding mechanism described in the next section to forward a TGT.

The PROXIABLE flag in a ticket is normally only interpreted by the ticket-granting service. It can be ignored by application servers. When set, this flag tells the ticket-granting server that it is OK to issue a new ticket (but not a TGT) with a different network address based on this ticket. This flag is set if requested by the client on initial authentication. By default, the client will request that it be set when requesting a TGT, and that it be reset when requesting any other ticket.

This flag allows a client to pass a proxy to a server to perform a remote request on its behalf (e.g., a print service client can give the print server a proxy to access the client's files on a particular file server in order to satisfy a print request).

In order to complicate the use of stolen credentials, Kerberos tickets are often valid only from those network addresses specifically included in the ticket, but it is permissible as a policy option to allow requests and to issue tickets with no network addresses specified. When granting a proxy, the client MUST specify the new network address from which the proxy is to be used or indicate that the proxy is to be issued for use from any address.

The PROXY flag is set in a ticket by the TGS when it issues a proxy ticket. Application servers MAY check this flag; and at their option they MAY require additional authentication from the agent presenting the proxy in order to provide an audit trail.