Decentralized user authentication in a global file system

The challenge for user authentication in a global file system is allowing people to grant access to specific users and groups in remote administrative domains, without assuming any kind of pre-existing administrative relationship. The traditional approach to user authentication across administrative domains is for users to prove their identities through a chain of certificates. Certificates allow for general forms of delegation, but they often require more infrastructure than is necessary to support a network file system. This paper introduces an approach without certificates. Local authentication servers pre-fetch and cache remote user and group definitions from remote authentication servers. During a file access, an authentication server can establish identities for users based just on local information. This approach is particularly well-suited to file systems, and it provides a simple and intuitive interface that is similar to those found in local access control mechanisms...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: SOSP
• Authors: Michael Kaminsky, George Savvides, David Mazières, M. Frans Kaashoek
• Keywords: Authentication Server, Local Authentication Servers, Operating System, Remote Authentication Servers, SOSP 2003