MUNGE (MUNGE Uid 'N' Gid Emporium) is an authentication service for creating and validating user credentials. It is designed to be highly scalable for use in an HPC cluster environment. It provides a portable API for encoding the user's identity into a tamper-proof credential that can be obtained by an untrusted client and forwarded by untrusted intermediaries within a security realm. Clients within this realm can create and validate credentials without the use of root privileges, reserved ports, or platform-specific methods.