Kerberos is the system which underpins the vast majority of strong authentication across the Apache HBase/Hadoop application stack. Kerberos errors have brought many to their knees and it is often referred to as “black magic” or “the dark arts”; a long-standing joke that there are so few who understand how it works. This talk will cover the types of problems that Kerberos solves and doesn’t solve for HBase, decrypt some jargon on related libraries and technology that enable Kerberos authentication in HBase and Hadoop, and distill some basic takeaways designed to ease users in developing an application that can securely communicate with a “kerberized” HBase installation.