nanog mailing list archives
Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks
From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb () cs columbia edu>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 16:04:31 -0400
On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:41:16 -0500 "Brandon Galbraith" <brandon.galbraith () gmail com> wrote:
On 9/20/07, James R. Cutler <james.cutler () consultant com> wrote:Kerberos does not assume clock synchronization. Kerberos requires reasonable clock synchronization. And, as near as I can tell, clock synchronization is not part of the Kerberos protocol. Kick me if I err in this. Cutlerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerberos_%28protocol%29#Kerberos_drawbacks<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerberos_%2528protocol%2529#Kerberos_drawbacks> "Kerberos requires the clocks of the involved hosts to be synchronized. The tickets have time availability period and, if the host clock is not synchronized with the clock of Kerberos server, the authentication will fail. The default configuration requires that clock times are no more than 10 minutes apart. In practice, NTP<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Time_Protocol>daemons are usually employed to keep the host clocks synchronized."
That's correct, though I believe some versions use an offset hack. The initial exchange with the Kerberos server is strongly authenticated. It's used to issue a ticket-granting ticket; replay of TGTs (and service tickets obtained via TGTs) partially relies on synchronized clocks. The offset hack has the Kerberos server -- a universally trusted party -- note and seal in the tickets -- the client's time offset from KDC reality. Any services that accept the tickets can use this value to correct for clock skew. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
Current thread:
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks, (continued)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Xin Liu (Sep 18)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Bora Akyol (Sep 18)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Valdis . Kletnieks (Sep 18)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Steven M. Bellovin (Sep 18)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Adrian Chadd (Sep 18)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks William Herrin (Sep 18)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Stephen Sprunk (Sep 18)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Jeff McAdams (Sep 19)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks James R. Cutler (Sep 20)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Brandon Galbraith (Sep 20)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Steven M. Bellovin (Sep 20)
- RE: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Buhrmaster, Gary (Sep 20)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Janet Sullivan (Sep 17)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Robert E. Seastrom (Sep 17)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Stephen Sprunk (Sep 18)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks bmanning (Sep 19)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Deepak Jain (Sep 17)
- Re: Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks Kevin Oberman (Sep 17)