Microsoft signs on to MIT Kerberos Consortium

Microsoft have joined the , an organisation that develops the widely used web hallmark standard. It falls in Apple, Google, and Sun on the consortium's
executive director board.

Kerberos, which ships with most operating systems, is a suite of hallmark communications protocols that tin enable characteristics such as as
single sign-on, where a single log-in and watchword can be used to entree multiple Web land sites or applications. It was developed
as portion of MIT's Undertaking Athene in the 1980s.

While Microsoft have implemented Kerberos communications protocols in its Windows 2000, XP, Waiter 2003, and 2008 and View operating systems,
the seller was accused eight old age ago of subverting the criterion by adding proprietary extensions.

During Microsoft's U.S. antimonopoly trial, an Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor testified the seller had extended the Kerberos specification used
by its Windows 2000 os such as that a non-Microsoft waiter could not utilize the security characteristics of the PC's OS.

That grounds contributed to the position that Microsoft gave lip service to the importance of interoperability, but implemented
technical blocks that barred out competitors. Microsoft eventually .

After both U.S. and European antimonopoly trials, Microsoft forcibly and voluntarily took stairway to better its documentation
of communications protocols as well as unfastened up more than of its internal technical details.

Microsoft's engagement in the Kerberos Consortium "shows Microsoft's continued and growing desire as of late to work with
the open-source community and industry pools around interoperability," wrote Uncle Tom Kemp, chief executive officer of Centrify, on his .

Centrify, a Microsoft partner, do software system called DirectControl that allows servers, workstations, and devices from other
sellers utilize Active Directory, which is Microsoft's hallmark and provisioning technology. Authentication is accomplished
using Kerberos, Kemp wrote.

Despite embroiling itself in controversy, Microsoft's engagement with Kerberos have also made usage of the communications protocol more widespread,
Kemp wrote.

"As we all cognize there are many out there that like to beat out up Microsoft regarding security, but it is dry that Microsoft
by default presents the added security of Kerberos as portion and package of the Windows platform," Kemp wrote.