Pluggable authentication modules - Definition and Overview

Pluggable authentication modules or PAM are a mechanism to integrate multiple low-level authentication schemes into a high-level API, which allows for programs that rely on authentication to be written independently of the underlying authentication scheme. PAM were first developed by Sun Microsystems, and are currently supported in Solaris, Linux, and FreeBSD.

See also

• Single sign-on
• Identity management

External links

• Linux-PAM page (http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/libs/pam/)
• Sun PAM page (http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/pam/)
• Aradial Security page (http://www.aradial.com)