Cascaded authentication

摘要

The author addresses a problem that has arisen in buildingndistributed systems in which incomplete trust exists and programncomposition is necessary. The problem is to permit authentication fornboth access control and accounting when cascading invocations. Thenproblem can be identified as one of providing cascaded authentication.nThe author has developed a mechanism she calls passports that are passednalong with each stage of the cascade and digitally signed at eachntransition. The information thus signed is that which is critical to thenauthentication. The focus is both on recognizing the problem and onndevising a solution that is efficient enough to be usable, althoughnthere will be some cost associated with such a mechanism