Kerberos: Preventing Attacks in Security Administration

Preventing Attacks with Kerberos

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Question

Kerberos can prevent which one of the following attacks?

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Explanations

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A. B. C. D.

B.

Each ticket in Kerberos has a timestamp and are subject to time expiration to help prevent these types of attacks.

The following answers are incorrect: tunneling attack.

This is incorrect because a tunneling attack is an attempt to bypass security and access low-level systems.

Kerberos cannot totally prevent these types of attacks.

destructive attack.

This is incorrect because depending on the type of destructive attack, Kerberos cannot prevent someone from physically destroying a server.

process attack.

This is incorrect because with Kerberos cannot prevent an authorzied individuals from running processes.

Kerberos is a network authentication protocol that provides a secure way to authenticate users, services, and devices in a network environment. It is designed to prevent several types of attacks, including playback attacks, which is the attack that Kerberos can prevent from the given options.

A playback attack, also known as a replay attack, is a type of attack where an attacker captures a valid network transmission, such as a user's authentication request, and then replays it to gain access to the system. The attacker may capture the transmission through various methods, such as sniffing the network traffic or intercepting communication between two parties.

Kerberos prevents playback attacks by using timestamps and nonces to ensure that each authentication request is unique and cannot be reused. When a user requests authentication, the Kerberos server generates a timestamp and a unique nonce (a one-time-use number). The user's authentication request includes the timestamp and nonce, along with other information such as the user's identity and the desired service.

If an attacker attempts to replay the authentication request, the Kerberos server will detect that the timestamp and nonce have already been used and reject the request, preventing the attacker from gaining access to the system.

To summarize, Kerberos can prevent playback (replay) attacks by using timestamps and nonces to ensure that each authentication request is unique and cannot be reused.