This setup will enable you to authenticate a user via spnego into your webapp. To run with spengo enabled the following command line options are required: -Djava.security.krb5.conf=/path/to/jetty/etc/krb5.ini -Djava.security.auth.login.config=/path/to/jetty/etc/spnego.conf -Djavax.security.auth.useSubjectCredsOnly=false The easiest place to put these lines are in the start.ini file. For debugging the spengo authentication the following options are helpful: -Dorg.eclipse.jetty.LEVEL=debug -Dsun.security.spnego.debug=true Spengo Authentication is enabled in the webapp with the following setup. Secure Area /secure/me/* MORTBAY.ORG <-- this is the domain that the user is a member of SPNEGO Test Realm (optionally to add custom error page) /loginError.html?param=foo A corresponding UserRealm needs to be created either programmatically if embedded, via the jetty.xml or in a context file for the webapp. (in the jetty.xml) Test Realm /etc/spnego.properties (context file) Test Realm /etc/spnego.properties true