Question on Loosely Synchronized Router Clocks

Thu Sep 20 20:04:31 UTC 2007

On Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:41:16 -0500
"Brandon Galbraith" <brandon.galbraith at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 9/20/07, James R. Cutler <james.cutler at 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.
> >
> >         Cutler
> >
> 
> http://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