The TrustBroker™ Secure Connection Pack provides a collection of utility applications that are used to perform common connection related tasks, such as file transfer, interactive access and remote execution of shell scripts.

The secure authenticated access to the remote host is acheived using the Kerberos protocol so that mutual authentication, data integrity and encryption can be provided between local utilities and services on the remote host.

The following operating systems are supported by the Secure Connection Pack product.

• Microsoft® Windows® 2000, XP & 2003 on x86 (32-bit)
• SUN Solaris™ Versions 8, 9 & 10 on Sparc (32-bit & 64-bit)
• SUN Solaris™ Version 10 on x86 (32-bit)
• SUN Solaris™ Version 10 on x86_64 (AMD64) (32-bit & 64-bit)
• Compaq Tru64™ Versions 4.0D, 5.0, 5.1, 5.1A & 5.1B (64-bit)
• IBM AIX™ Versions 5.1, 5.2 & 5.3 on PowerPC (32-bit & 64-bit)
• i5/OS v5r3 or later on IBM Series i (32-bit & 64-bit)
• Hewlett Packard HP/UX™ Versions 11 & 11i v1 or v2 on PA-RISC (32-bit & 64-bit)
• Hewlett Packard HP/UX™ Version 11i v2 on Itanium (IA-64) (32-bit & 64-bit)
• Red Hat Linux Version 7.2 or later on x86 (32-bit)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Version 3 on x86 (32-bit)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Version 4 on x86_64 (AMD64 / EM64T) (32-bit & 64-bit)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Version 4 on PowerPC (e.g. IBM iSeries / pSeries) (32-bit & 64-bit)
• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) Version 8 on x86 (32-bit)
• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) Version 9 on x86_64 (AMD64 / EM64T) (32-bit & 64-bit)
• SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) Version 9 on PowerPC (e.g. IBM iSeries / pSeries) (32-bit & 64-bit)

It is typical for a company to have many applications which require data files to be copied across their network between servers, perhaps controlled by batch scripts or schedulers. This movement of data is normally performed overnight, and certainly unattended from any user intervention or supervision. In order to allow application code on one system to access another system to send or receive data across the network a username and password are normally required. Often the username and password are stored in the batch scripts in readable format or embedded into application code. The storage of a username and password is clearly not advisable since :

• The chances of the password being compromised is very high.
• The password cannot easily be changed if it is compromised, or suspected of being.
• If the password is compromised, any damage caused is likely to be undetectable since it will not be possible using audit data to determine who modified the critical application data files.
• A system administrator or developer will be able to access the code where the passwords are stored. Are you prepared to take the risk that your system administrators or developers will not pass this password information onto others - perhaps when they leave the company ?

The interception of crucial passwords and interception, or modification of data is therefore fairly straight forward for the most basic of disgruntled employee or company saboteur and so the possibility of somebody being able to obtain access to production application data via passwords needs to be illiminated by enhancing the authentication capabilities of ftp.

The Kerberos enabled ftp application contained in the TrustBroker™ Secure Connection Pack offers a secure solution to this problem by providing mutual authentication between source and target systems. The source host and target host are made to trust each other using symmetric encryption keys so there is no storage or transmission of passwords needed. In fact, each instance of ftp either as a source or target can have its own unique electronic identity with an associated (unique and randomly generated) symmetric encryption key. There are also additional benefits since data integrity and confidentiality can be enabled to ensure :

• Application data is not tampered with whilst being transferred between hosts.
• Application data is encrypted to prevent unauthorised access to the application data as it moves between systems.

The ftp application can also be used in an interactive mode, either between UNIX systems or (in conjunction with the WRQ Reflection product for Windows) between Windows and UNIX systems.

telnet security

In many companies networks system or application administrators need to login to application servers for administration purposes - it is typical to find this being done with the telnet protocol – with telnet, passwords are normally transmitted across the network in clear text, however with the Kerberos enabled telnet provided with the TrustBroker™ Secure Connection Pack there is no transmission or storage of passwords during the authentication process. Additionally the data moving across the telnet interactive session can be encrypted for privacy reasons and data integrity services added to ensure the contents of the communication are not changed during transmission.

It is also common to find that when telnet is used, passwords are shared amongst administrators – when an administrator leaves the company or changes role the other administrators do not change the password thus creating an increased security risk. The passwords (in particular for accounts with a high level of permissions) are typically set so they can be easily remembered by more than one “trusted” individual. These problems caused by password sharing are eliminated when using the TrustBroker™ secure telnet utility and service - with Kerberos the administrator/user is able to first authenticate as themselves with their own secret (known only to themselves) password and then present their identity to the application server. The application server can then decide whether they are authorised to access the specific shared account, or not. The important difference is that the administrator/user concerned only needs to know their own password and there is no password sharing, storage or transmission involved.

An example :

The following screens show a typical example of a Kerberos enabled telnet session using the Secure Connection Pack for Windows and UNIX.

1. A user logs into Windows, authenticating themselves to the network.
2. Using the same credentials obtained during the operating system login the user is able to start a telnet session with a UNIX host and forward their credentials at the same time so they can be used from the UNIX host to access other hosts securely. This whole process is completed without any password transmission or storage. The screen below shows the CyberSafe telnet for Windows connect dialog.

    

   

    

3. The following screen shows a login that has completed successfully and the credentials from the Windows workstation have been forwarded, ready for secure access via telnet, ftp, rlogin, rcp, rsh or ftp to other hosts in the network.