7/28 What are the security implications of using a network time server?
\_ If someone nasty can control your clock precisely it may make it
easier for them to guess the values that will be generated by
psuedo-random algorithms seeded with the current time. If those
are used to form keys or such, security may be weakened. However,
many security protocols, such as Kerberos & NIS+, require computers
to have relatively close ideas of the current time so that they can
prevent replay attacks by rejecting packets with far-off timestamps. |