WHATPORT(9878) whatport.net WHATPORT(9878)
9878

kca-service — KX509 certificate issuance

KX509, which trades a Kerberos ticket for a short-lived X.509 certificate — UDP only; TCP 9878 is Reserved.

UDP IANA registry

Description

RFC 6717 documents kx509 as deployed in 2012: a client sends a single UDP request containing a Kerberos service ticket and a public key, and a Kerberized certificate authority replies with a matching X.509 certificate. IANA registers UDP 9878 as kca-service and explicitly marks TCP 9878 as Reserved, so a TCP listener here is not KX509. Deployment was largely university campuses bridging Kerberos realms to PKI-based services; clients can also find the KCA through _kca._udp.REALM SRV records.

Exposed to the internet?

Do not expose

This is a certificate authority endpoint. It authenticates callers with Kerberos, but a CA's issuance interface belongs inside the realm it serves, not on a public address.

Check it yourself

$ nc -vzu TARGET 9878

See also

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