MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1

The MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 authorization protocol was developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A magic cookie is a long, randomly generated binary password. At server startup, the magic cookie is created for the server and the user who started the system. On every connection attempt, the user's client sends the magic cookie to the server as part of the connection packet. This magic cookie is compared with the server's magic cookie. The connection is allowed if the magic cookies match, or denied if they do not match.