Roadmap

This is the outline of the development roadmap for MIT Kerberos. A more comprehensive list of projects is also available; some individual projects have links below.

Timeline

Target 6 to 12 month cycle. (9 months plus/minus 3)

Releases will have a 2-year maintenance lifetime, subject to changes based on sponsor or community input.

krb5-1.8

Branch Jan. 2009

Release early Mar. 2010

krb5-1.9

Branch Oct. 2010

Release Dec. 2010

krb5-1.10

Branch Oct. 2011

Release Dec. 2011

krb5-1.11

Branch Oct. 2012

Release Dec. 2012

Guiding principles

• Code quality
• Developer experience (including modularity)
• End-user experience
• Administrator experience
• Performance
• Protocol evolution

Current roadmap items

Code quality

• Move toward test-driven development
• Increase conformance to coding style
  • Selective refactoring
    • KDC (1.9)
  • Continue formatting cleanup
• Use cyclomatic complexity metrics to identify cleanup targets

Developer experience

• Crypto modularity -- make sure PKCS#11 etc. work well
  • NSS back end (1.9)
• API documentation
• Support readily building subsets
  • "Lite" client
  • "Lite" server
• KDC Database modularity (long-term)
  • SQLite back end
  • Does the existing DAL make sense?
  • Make data model less "blobby"
  • Track IETF data model work
• Plugin support improvements
  • GSS-API mechanism glue
  • DNS / host-to-realm mapping
• Secure co-processor ("would be nice")
• GSS proxy
• interposition capability for GSS mechs (useful for GSS proxy) -- external for 1.11
• Use default keytab for gss_init_sec_context
• gss_export_cred (useful for async GSS proxy)
• Improve ASN.1 support code (better support for plugins that need to encode/decode their own ASN.1 types)

End-user experience

• Credential management
  • KIM API (done)
  • Cross-platform CCAPI
    • Done for Mac & Windows
    • UNIX implementation

Administrator Experience

• Add interface to purge old keys (1.8 patch?)
• Add interface to delete keys of specific enctypes (1.8 patch?)
• Disable enctypes at compile time (1.8 patch?)
• Improve IPv6 support
• Improve key rollover
  • Application service keys
• Decrease DNS-related fragility
• Plugins for login failure lockout
• Plugins for audit support
• Plugins for ticket issuance access control
• Plugins for domain-realm mapping
• Friendlier smart card support
• FAST OTP client in libkrb5 (maybe excluding second-level plugins hardware OTP tokens)
• Multiple logging levels for trace logging

Performance

• Decrease DNS traffic
• Client resolution of KDC (etc.) addresses can be very slow. Decouple address resolution from initiation of KDC communications. (requires some redesign of internal interfaces)
• Replay cache ("rcache")
  • Disable on KDC
    • Avoids known false-positive issues
  • Improve implementation
  • Support disabling by service type name
• Enhancements to improve concurrency
  • Explicit state
  • Reduce mutex contention
  • Support asynchronous APIs and frameworks such as Apple's Grand Central Dispatch; begin refactoring code to make this easier

Protocol evolution

• International strings in protocol (need IETF feedback)
  • Principal names
  • Error strings, etc. (need language tag negotiation)
• Timestamp-independence
• Replay-proofing protocols
• Encryption algorithm updates (SHA-2, SHA-3, CCM, GCM)
• PKU2U
• One time password support
• Multiply-authenticated authorization data container
• POSIX IDs in authorization data
• Level of Assurance in authorization data
• Site-defined string-keyed claims in authorization data
• X.509 attributes in authorization data
• FAST preauth sets (e.g. OTP + long-term password)

Completed roadmap items

Code quality

• Remove krb4 (1.7)
• Move applications to separate distribution (1.8)
• Use safer library functions
  • Avoids false positives
  • Avoids need to (probably manually) evaluate "unsafe" calls
  • Stop using strcpy, strcat, sprintf, etc.
    • Mostly done
    • New internal APIs for complex operations
• Reduce commitment to "difficult" platforms
  • See supported platforms
  • Focuses resources more effectively
• Move toward test-driven development
  • Python-based test framework (1.9)

Developer experience

• GSS-API mechglue changes to enable NTLM support (1.7)
• Crypto modularity (1.8)
  • Native (accelerated) crypto API support
  • Performance optimizations (caching, etc.)
  • New API design for encryption performance (1.8)
• "The Great Reindent" (1.8)
• Plugins
  • PRNG (1.9)
  • Profile / configuration (1.10)
• Subsets
  • GSS-API: separate context establishment from message protection functions, e.g. Solaris user/kernel space split (1.10)

End-user experience

• Referrals (1.7)
• Localization (1.10)

Administrator experience

• Incremental propagation (1.7)
• Master key rollover (1.7)
• Auditing support (log all ticket requests) (1.7)
• Disable DES by default (1.8)
  • Add more versatile facilities for configuring cryptosystems (1.8)
• Lockout for repeated login failures (1.8)
  • Implement LHA/Apple proposal to store config information in ccache to signal when a realm supports referrals and thus the future capability to eschew reverse DNS resolution (1.8)
• Trace logging for easier troubleshooting (1.9)
• Plugins for password quality checks (1.9)
• Plugins for password synchronization (1.9)
• Print enctypes using the "input form" string (1.9)

Performance

• New crypto API (1.8) facilitates optimizations
• Replay cache ("rcache")
  • Collision avoidance (1.7)
• Disable replay cache on KDC (1.9)

Protocol evolution

• Encryption algorithm negotiation (1.7)
• Microsoft Kerberos extensions (1.7)
• Improved PKINIT support (1.7)
• Anonymous PKINIT (1.8)
• FAST (done in 1.7 for a subset; IETF)
• FAST negotiation (1.8)
• IAKERB (1.9)
• Camellia (1.9)