source: heimdal/trunk/doc/misc.texi@ 4

@c $Id$

@node Things in search for a better place, Kerberos 4 issues, Applications, Top
@chapter Things in search for a better place

@section Making things work on Ciscos

Modern versions of Cisco IOS has some support for authenticating via
Kerberos 5. This can be used both by having the router get a ticket when
you login (boring), and by using Kerberos authenticated telnet to access
your router (less boring). The following has been tested on IOS
11.2(12), things might be different with other versions. Old versions
are known to have bugs.

To make this work, you will first have to configure your router to use
Kerberos (this is explained in the documentation). A sample
configuration looks like the following:

@example
aaa new-model
aaa authentication login default krb5-telnet krb5 enable
aaa authorization exec krb5-instance
kerberos local-realm FOO.SE
kerberos srvtab entry host/router.foo.se 0 891725446 4 1 8 012345678901234567
kerberos server FOO.SE 10.0.0.1
kerberos instance map admin 15
@end example

This tells you (among other things) that when logging in, the router
should try to authenticate with kerberised telnet, and if that fails try
to verify a plain text password via a Kerberos ticket exchange (as
opposed to a local database, RADIUS or something similar), and if that
fails try the local enable password. If you're not careful when you
specify the `login default' authentication mechanism, you might not be
able to login at all. The `instance map' and `authorization exec' lines
says that people with `admin' instances should be given `enabled' shells
when logging in.

The numbers after the principal on the `srvtab' line are principal type,
time stamp (in seconds since 1970), key version number (4), keytype (1 ==
des), key length (always 8 with des), and then the key.

To make the Heimdal KDC produce tickets that the Cisco can decode you
might have to turn on the @samp{encode_as_rep_as_tgs_rep} flag in the
KDC. You will also have to specify that the router can't handle anything
but @samp{des-cbc-crc}. This can be done with the @samp{del_enctype}
command of @samp{kadmin}.

This all fine and so, but unless you have an IOS version with encryption
(available only in the U.S) it doesn't really solve any problems. Sure
you don't have to send your password over the wire, but since the telnet
connection isn't protected it's still possible for someone to steal your
session. This won't be fixed until someone adds integrity to the telnet
protocol.

A working solution would be to hook up a machine with a real operating
system to the console of the Cisco and then use it as a backwards
terminal server.