This Python module is an alternative to ktutil for creating a Kerberos keytab.

Similar to newer versions of ktutil, it allows for the overriding of the default salt used for encryption of AES keys.

AES keys stored in the keytab are encrypted using a salt that typically derived from the principal name. By default, the salt is formed by concatenating the REALM with the principal short name.

This works well for MIT KDCs.

For Active Directory (AD) KDCs, the user’s login name (samAccountName) and principal name (userPrincipalName) can sometimes differ. For example, a username could have a login name jdoe and a principal name of [email protected] or [email protected]. In this case, when encrypting data, AD will use EXAMPLE.COMjane.doe or EXAMPLE.COMJDoe, respectively, as the salt and the keytab salt must match it for it to work, otherwise the keytab authentication will fail with a "pre-authentication failure".

For FreeIPA, the salt is a random string. To successfully create a keytab you have to always specify the correct salt.

ktutil versions 1.16 and above added a -s option to the addent command that allows you to specify a custom salt for the key. The krb5-workstation package on Centos 8 machines come with this features but Centos 7 still has version 1.15 of that package, which doesn’t allow for salt specification.

This python module works well in both environments and can replace ktutil for creating a keytab correctly.

If kinit is available on the system and --validate is specified, the generated keytab will be validated. If the validation fails and an alternative salt is reported in the validation process the keytab will be re-generated and re-validated using the reported salt. This behaviour can be suppressed with --no-alternative-salt.