Provided by: munge_0.5.16-1_amd64 
NAME
munge - MUNGE overview
INTRODUCTION
MUNGE (MUNGE Uid 'N' Gid Emporium) is an authentication service for creating and validating user
credentials. It is designed to be highly scalable for use in an HPC cluster environment. It provides a
portable API for encoding the user's identity into a tamper-proof credential that can be obtained by an
untrusted client and forwarded by untrusted intermediaries within a security realm. Clients within this
realm can create and validate credentials without the use of root privileges, reserved ports, or
platform-specific methods.
RATIONALE
The need for MUNGE arose out of the HPC cluster environment. Consider the scenario in which a local
daemon running on a login node receives a client request and forwards it on to remote daemons running on
compute nodes within the cluster. Since the user has already logged on to the login node, the local
daemon just needs a reliable means of ascertaining the UID and GID of the client process. Furthermore,
the remote daemons need a mechanism to ensure the forwarded authentication data has not been subsequently
altered.
A common solution to this problem is to use Unix domain sockets to determine the identity of the local
client, and then forward this information on to remote hosts via trusted rsh connections. But this
presents several new problems. First, there is no portable API for determining the identity of a client
over a Unix domain socket. Second, rsh connections must originate from a reserved port; the limited
number of reserved ports available on a given host directly limits scalability. Third, root privileges
are required in order to bind to a reserved port. Finally, the remote daemons have no means of
determining whether the client identity is authentic. MUNGE solves all of these problems.
USAGE
A process creates a credential by requesting one from the local MUNGE service, either via the
munge_encode() C library call or the munge executable. The encoded credential contains the UID and GID
of the originating process. This process sends the credential to another process within the security
realm as a means of proving its identity. The receiving process validates the credential with the use of
its local MUNGE service, either via the munge_decode() C library call or the unmunge executable. The
decoded credential provides the receiving process with a reliable means of ascertaining the UID and GID
of the originating process. This information can be used for accounting or access control decisions.
DETAILS
The contents of the credential (including any optional payload data) are encrypted with a key shared by
all munged daemons within the security realm. The integrity of the credential is ensured by a message
authentication code (MAC). The credential is valid for a limited time defined by its time-to-live (TTL);
this presumes clocks within a security realm are in sync. Unexpired credentials are tracked by the local
munged daemon in order to prevent replay attacks on a given host. Decoding of a credential can be
restricted to a particular user and/or group ID. The payload data can be used for purposes such as
embedding the destination's address to ensure the credential is only valid on a specific host. The
internal format of the credential is encoded in a platform-independent manner. And the credential itself
is base64 encoded to allow it to be transmitted over virtually any transport.
AUTHOR
Chris Dunlap <cdunlap@llnl.gov>
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 2007-2024 Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC.
Copyright (C) 2002-2007 The Regents of the University of California.
MUNGE is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General
Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.
Additionally for the MUNGE library (libmunge), you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms
of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
SEE ALSO
munge(1), remunge(1), unmunge(1), munge(3), munge_ctx(3), munge_enum(3), munged(8), mungekey(8).
https://github.com/dun/munge
munge-0.5.16 2024-03-15 MUNGE(7)