The NTPd packet-o-death exploits

General

When we began implementing the NTP protocol from scratch we found that after 30 years of sometimes smart and sometimes not-so-smart development, there were a number of security issues that we needed to address. Some of these are identified by Boston University researchers in their recent note on NTPd exploits. TimeKeeper is not vulnerable to…

Red Hat patches for the Leap Second

General

There will be a leap second June 30 2015 at midnight UCT. FSMLabs has tested TimeKeeper on Red Hat Linux and found that TimeKeeper handles the leap second properly. TimeKeeper avoids using the mechanism for managing the leap second that is sometimes built into Linux. By default TimeKeeper “slews” on the leap second to allow…