In Part 3 of this series we look at setting up Kerberos Authentication in the simplest possible scenario. If you missed Parts 1 (What is Kerberos and how does it work) and 2 (Service Principal Names) they may be worth reading first. In this scenario, we have a client, a DC and a single IIS server. As we progress through the series, we will progressively add more elements into the mix.

In this very simplistic example a client wishes to authenticate to a website hosted on the webserver. The sequence of events is illustrated in the diagram:

IIS and Kerberos - a simple scenario

1) The client makes a HTTP Request
2) The server denies the request with a 401 Authorization Required. It includes the WWW-Authenticate: Negotiate header and/or the WWW-Authenticate: Kerberos header indicating that it supports Kerberos authentication
3) The client requests a Service Ticket from the KDC hosted on the Domain Controller
4) The Domain Controller returns the Service Ticket
5) The Client generates the Authenticator, and sends this plus the Service Ticket in a new HTTP request to the web server
6) The webserver determines the identity of the client, checks the ACL on the resource and either permits or denies access to the resource.

In order for this sequence of events to work the following need to be configured.

The Browser
For Internet Explorer to use Kerberos to authenticate to IIS the following must be configured correctly:

  1. Under Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced the option "Enable Integrated Windows Authentication (Requires Restart)" must be checked. Whilst technically IWA encompasses both NTLm and Kerberos, IE will use NTLM only if this option is not checked whilst it can use both Kerberos or NTLM if this option is checked.
  2. The website you are connecting to must be located in the "Intranet" Security zone. You can see what zone IE thinks the website is in by looking at the icon in the bottom right-hand side of IE's status bar. If the website is located in the "Internet" zone, IE will not even attempt Kerberos authentication. This is because, in most Internet scenarios, a connection with a domain controller can not be established. The simple rule is that any website that contains full stops (periods for Americans) such as an IP address or Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) is in the Internet zone. If you are connecting to an IP address or FQDN then use IE's settings or Group Policy to add this site to the Intranet security zone. For more information on how IE determines what zone the website is in please see KB 258063

The Domain Controller
For the Domain Controller to generate the appropriate tickets to give to the client an appropriate Service Principal Name (SPN) must be registered in Active Directory. When a Windows Server 2003 machine is added to a domain, a HOST SPN for both the NetBIOS name and the FQDN of the server is automatically added to Active Directory. If your website is accessible at http://servername or http://servername.domain.tld (tld = Top Level Domain, such .com or .local) and the web application pool is running as Network Service, Local Service or Local System, you do not need to change any SPNs.

If the web application pool hosting the site is running under a custom account, the SPN HTTP/servername or HTTP/servername.domain.tld needs to be registered under that custom user account. If those HTTP SPNs exist under any other account, they need to be removed.

And lastly, if the website is accessible at an arbitrary hostname that is unrelated to the actual server’s name (e.g. www.domain.tld) then a SPN needs to be registered for that hostname. If the web application pool hosting the website is running as Network Service, Local Service or LocalSystem, then the SPN needs to be registered under the server’s computer account. If the web app pool is running under a custom user account, then the SPN needs to be registered under that user account in Active Directory.

SPNs can be added using a GUI-based tool such as ADSIEdit. Or can be added programmatically using an interface to AD (such as ADSI), or can be added using the SetSPN.exe command line tool (SetSPN is discussed in Part 2 of IIS and Kerberos listed earlier). To add an SPN using SetSPN for:

  1. a servername under a custom user account:
    setspn –A HTTP/servername Domain\Username
  2. an arbitrary hostname under a computer account:
    setspn –A HTTP/hostname.domain.tld Domain\MachineName
  3. an arbitrary hostname under a custom user account:
    setspn –A HTTP/hostname.domain.tld Domain\UserName

The IIS Server
There isn’t a lot to configure on the IIS Server. Firstly Integrated Windows Authentication (IWA) should be enabled for the website or application you are seeking to protect. By default this enabled both the Negotiate and NTLM Authentication Providers in the IIS metabase. If you have edited the metabase to remove the Negotiate provider, you will need to add it back in. The installation of some products (e.g. Sharepoint Portal Server 2001) removes the Negotiate provider – you may need to manually add it back in. See Microsoft KB Article 832769 for your options.

Secondly, all web applications hosted at the DNS name in question need to be running in one or more web application pools that are all running under the same user account. It’s easiest if all the web applications at that DNS name are running in a single web app pool. However if you do need to split web applications into multiple pools, those pools need to be running under the same user account.

Summary
And that should be all that is required for your Internet Explorer browser to authenticate to IIS using Kerberos. To verify whether this is occuring, you can use the tools described in my previous post on determining whether the browser is using NTLM or Kerberos to authenticate to IIS.