Methods and apparatuses are provided for limiting access, by users of a
networked computer system, to networked services on the computer system.
More specifically, the present invention facilitates limiting access by
other users to a first user's credential that can be used to facilitate
access to networked services. A method includes authenticating a user,
determining a credential for that user, and generating a corresponding
random secret. The credential is stored in memory that can only be
accessed through execution of a local security authority (LSA). The
random secret is written to a secret file that is readable and writeable
only by the user. When the user initiates an application, a security
library associated with the application reads the random secret from the
secret file and passes the secret to the LSA. The LSA identifies the
credential corresponding to that secret and return a credential handle to
the application client via the security library. The application client
can use the credential handle to have the LSA use the credential on its
behalf; in the Kerberos case, the LSA obtains GSSAPI Kerberos tokens and
returns them to the application. The technique is also used in
combination with the Unix setuid mechanism to allow one or more programs
to have all of the user's network rights while all other programs have
one of one or more subsets of the user's rights. Additional embodiments
of the present invention also include computer readable medium with
program instructions and a computer system configured to perform the
above operations.