What is "Principal", and what is meant by "Principal authentica

What is "Principal", and what is meant by "Principal
authentication"?

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What is "Principal", and what is meant by "Principal authentication"?..

Linda Gricius (March, 1998):

Principal authentication is the process of proving your
identity to the security enforcing components of the system
so that they can grant access to information and services
based on who you are. This applies to both human users of
the system as well as to applications.

A user or application that can authenticate itself is known
as a principal. A principal has a name that uniquely
identifies it.

For human users, the process of authenticating to the system
is informally known as "logging on". In a typical system, an
application is provided to collect information proving the
user's identity. This application is often referred to as
the "user sponsor". In order to successfully authenticate to
the system, it is important that a principal can provide
some proof that it is who it claims to be. Proof of
authentication is usually achieved by demonstrating
knowledge or possession of a "secret" known only to the
"real principal", such as a password or cryptographic key.

It is important that a successfully authenticated principal
can be given some unforgeable evidence that it has recently
authenticated, in order to prevent the principal from having
to continually re-authenticate itself to different parts of
the system. The unforgeable evidence that is returned to
authenticated principals is known as the principal's
credentials.

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