article · 2003
Decentralized user authentication in a global file system
Michael Kaminsky, George Savvides, David Mazières, M. Frans Kaashoek
Cited by 16Abstract and details only
Abstract
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. An implementation of the authentication server and a file server supporting access control lists demonstrate the viability of this design in the context of the Self-certifying File System (SFS). Experiments demonstrate that the authentication server can scale to groups with tens of thousands of members.
Cite this paper
Kaminsky, M., Savvides, G., Mazières, D., & Kaashoek, M. F. (2003). Decentralized user authentication in a global file system. https://doi.org/10.1145/945445.945452
Kaminsky, Michael, et al. “Decentralized user authentication in a global file system.” 2003, pp. 60–73, https://doi.org/10.1145/945445.945452.
Kaminsky, Michael, George Savvides, David Mazières, and M. Frans Kaashoek. 2003. “Decentralized user authentication in a global file system.” https://doi.org/10.1145/945445.945452.
Kaminsky, M. et al. (2003) ‘Decentralized user authentication in a global file system’. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/945445.945452.
@article{kaminsky2003decentralized,
title = {{Decentralized user authentication in a global file system}},
author = {Kaminsky, Michael and Savvides, George and Mazières, David and Kaashoek, M. Frans},
pages = {60--73},
year = {2003},
doi = {10.1145/945445.945452}
}Made from the index record. Check names, capitalisation and page numbers against the paper. Need another style? AI for Research has over 10,000.