Reasonable Authentication in Distributed Systems

One major concern of such computer systems is the authentication of users who are accessing the host computer from a remote site. In such cases, the communication lines are open to intrusion where the information transferred can be captured or replayed by an intruder. Not only is the information transferred from one place to the other unprotected, but so are the machines themselves. Because, as in most cases, the identification tokens such as passwords are transferred through communication lines in plain text and any intruder who captures this can use it later to get access to the computer. Thus, reliable authentication becomes a crucial factor for security of distributed systems. 1 Introduction In the technologically advanced world of today, computers are used to aid in a variety of ways. Often, the computers we interact with are connected to a large distributed system of computers, all working cooperatively. The proliferation and interconnection of these distributed computer system..