Roughtime
draft-ietf-ntp-roughtime-06
The information below is for an old version of the document.
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| Authors | Aanchal Malhotra , Adam Langley , Watson Ladd , Marcus Dansarie | ||
| Last updated | 2022-06-07 | ||
| Replaces | draft-roughtime-aanchal | ||
| RFC stream | Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) | ||
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draft-ietf-ntp-roughtime-06
Internet Engineering Task Force A. Malhotra
Internet-Draft Boston University
Intended status: Informational A. Langley
Expires: 9 December 2022 Google
W. Ladd
Sealance, Inc.
M. Dansarie
7 June 2022
Roughtime
draft-ietf-ntp-roughtime-06
Abstract
This document specifies Roughtime - a protocol that aims to achieve
rough time synchronization while detecting servers that provide
inaccurate time and providing cryptographic proof of their
malfeasance.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute
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material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 9 December 2022.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
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provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Requirements Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3. Protocol Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. The Guarantee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Message Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5.1. Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.1.1. int32 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.1.2. uint32 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.1.3. uint64 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
5.1.4. Tag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.1.5. Timestamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
5.2. Header . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
6. Protocol Details . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
6.1. Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6.1.1. VER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6.1.2. NONC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6.2. Responses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6.2.1. SIG . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
6.2.2. VER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6.2.3. NONC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6.2.4. PATH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6.2.5. SREP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
6.2.6. CERT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.2.7. INDX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
6.3. The Merkle Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6.3.1. Root Value Validity Check Algorithm . . . . . . . . . 12
6.4. Validity of Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
7. Integration Into NTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
8. Grease . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
9. Roughtime Servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
10. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
11. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
11.1. Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number
Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
11.2. Roughtime Version Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
11.3. Roughtime Tag Registry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
12. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
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13. Privacy Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
14. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
14.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
14.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Appendix A. Terms and Abbreviations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Authors' Addresses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
1. Introduction
Time synchronization is essential to Internet security as many
security protocols and other applications require synchronization
[RFC7384] [MCBG]. Unfortunately widely deployed protocols such as
the Network Time Protocol (NTP) [RFC5905] lack essential security
features, and even newer protocols like Network Time Security (NTS)
[RFC8915] lack mechanisms to ensure that the servers behave
correctly. Authenticating time servers prevents network adversaries
from modifying time packets, but an authenticated time server still
has full control over the contents of the time packet and may
transmit incorrect time. The Roughtime protocol provides
cryptographic proof of malfeasance, enabling clients to detect and
prove to a third party a server's attempts to influence the time a
client computes.
+==============+======================+=============================+
| Protocol | Authenticated Server | Server Malfeasance Evidence |
+==============+======================+=============================+
| NTP, | N | N |
| Chronos | | |
+--------------+----------------------+-----------------------------+
| NTP-MAC | Y* | N |
+--------------+----------------------+-----------------------------+
| NTP-Autokey | Y** | N |
+--------------+----------------------+-----------------------------+
| NTS | Y | N |
+--------------+----------------------+-----------------------------+
| Roughtime | Y | Y |
+--------------+----------------------+-----------------------------+
Table 1: Security Properties of current protocols.
Y* For security issues with symmetric-key based NTP-MAC
authentication, please refer to RFC 8573 [RFC8573].
Y** For security issues with Autokey Public Key Authentication, refer
to [Autokey].
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* If a server's timestamps do not fit into the time context of other
servers' responses, then a Roughtime client can cryptographically
prove this misbehavior to third parties. This helps detect
dishonest or malfunctioning servers.
* A Roughtime client can roughly detect (with no absolute guarantee)
a delay attack [DelayAttacks] but can not cryptographically prove
this to a third party. However such attacks expand the round trip
time between request and response.
* Note that delay attacks cannot be detected/stopped by any
protocol. Delay attacks can not, however, undermine the security
guarantees provided by Roughtime.
* Although delay attacks cannot be prevented, they can be limited to
a predetermined upper bound. This can be done by defining a
maximal tolerable Round Trip Time (RTT) value, MAX-RTT, that a
Roughtime client is willing to accept. A Roughtime client can
measure the RTT of every request-response handshake and compare it
to MAX-RTT. If the RTT exceeds MAX-RTT, the corresponding
measurement is discarded. When this approach is used, the maximal
time error that can be caused by a delay attack is MAX-RTT/2. It
should be noted that this approach assumes that the nature of the
system is known to the client, including reasonable upper bounds
on the RTT value.
2. Requirements Language
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
3. Protocol Overview
Roughtime is a protocol for rough time synchronization that enables
clients to provide cryptographic proof of server malfeasance. It
does so by having responses from servers include a signature over a
value derived from a nonce in the client request. This provides
cryptographic proof that the timestamp was issued after the server
received the client's request. The derived value included in the
server's response is the root of a Merkle tree which includes the
hash of the client's nonce as the value of one of its leaf nodes.
This enables the server to amortize the relatively costly signing
operation over a number of client requests.
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Single server mode: At its most basic level, Roughtime is a one round
protocol in which a completely fresh client requests the current time
and the server sends a signed response. The response includes a
timestamp and a radius used to indicate the server's certainty about
the reported time. For example, a radius of 1,000,000 microseconds
means the server is absolutely confident that the true time is within
one second of the reported time.
The server proves freshness of its response as follows. The client's
request contains a nonce which the server incorporates into its
signed response. The client can verify the server's signatures and -
provided that the nonce has sufficient entropy - this proves that the
signed response could only have been generated after the nonce.
4. The Guarantee
A Roughtime server guarantees that a response to a query sent at t_1,
received at t_2, and with timestamp t_3 has been created between the
transmission of the query and its reception. If t_3 is not within
that interval, a server inconsistency may be detected and used to
impeach the server. The propagation of such a guarantee and its use
of type synchronization is discussed in Section 7. No delay attacker
may affect this: they may only expand the interval between t_1 and
t_2, or of course stop the measurement in the first place.
5. Message Format
Roughtime messages are maps consisting of one or more (tag, value)
pairs. They start with a header, which contains the number of pairs,
the tags, and value offsets. The header is followed by a message
values section which contains the values associated with the tags in
the header. Messages MUST be formatted according to Figure 1 as
described in the following sections.
Messages MAY be recursive, i.e. the value of a tag can itself be a
Roughtime message.
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0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Number of pairs (uint32) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
. .
. N-1 offsets (uint32) .
. .
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
. .
. N tags (uint32) .
. .
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
. .
. Values .
. .
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 1: Roughtime Message Format
5.1. Data Types
5.1.1. int32
An int32 is a 32 bit signed integer. It is serialized least
significant byte first in sign-magnitude representation with the sign
bit in the most significant bit. The negative zero value
(0x80000000) MUST NOT be used and any message with it is
syntactically invalid and MUST be ignored.
5.1.2. uint32
A uint32 is a 32 bit unsigned integer. It is serialized with the
least significant byte first.
5.1.3. uint64
A uint64 is a 64 bit unsigned integer. It is serialized with the
least significant byte first.
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5.1.4. Tag
Tags are used to identify values in Roughtime messages. A tag is a
uint32 but may also be listed in this document as a sequence of up to
four ASCII characters [RFC0020]. ASCII strings shorter than four
characters can be unambiguously converted to tags by padding them
with zero bytes. For example, the ASCII string "NONC" would
correspond to the tag 0x434e4f4e and "PAD" would correspond to
0x00444150. Note that when encoded into a message the ASCII values
will be in the corresponding order.
5.1.5. Timestamp
A timestamp is a uint64 interpreted in the following way. The most
significant 3 bytes contain the integer part of a Modified Julian
Date (MJD). The least significant 5 bytes is a count of the number
of microseconds since midnight on that day.
The MJD is the number of UTC days since 17 November 1858
[ITU-R_TF.457-2]. It is useful to note that 1 January 1970 is 40,587
days after 17 November 1858.
Note that, unlike NTP, this representation does not use the full
number of bits in the fractional part and that days with leap seconds
will have more or fewer than the nominal 86,400,000,000 microseconds.
5.2. Header
All Roughtime messages start with a header. The first four bytes of
the header is the uint32 number of tags N, and hence of (tag, value)
pairs. The following 4*(N-1) bytes are offsets, each a uint32. The
last 4*N bytes in the header are tags.
Offsets refer to the positions of the values in the message values
section. All offsets MUST be multiples of four and placed in
increasing order. The first post-header byte is at offset 0. The
offset array is considered to have a not explicitly encoded value of
0 as its zeroth entry. The value associated with the ith tag begins
at offset[i] and ends at offset[i+1]-1, with the exception of the
last value which ends at the end of the message. Values may have
zero length.
Tags MUST be listed in the same order as the offsets of their values
and MUST also be sorted in ascending order by numeric value. A tag
MUST NOT appear more than once in a header.
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6. Protocol Details
As described in Section 3, clients initiate time synchronization by
sending requests containing a nonce to servers who send signed time
responses in return. Roughtime packets can be sent between clients
and servers either as UDP datagrams or via TCP streams. Servers
SHOULD support the UDP transport mode, while TCP transport is
OPTIONAL.
A Roughtime packet MUST be formatted according to Figure 2 and as
described here. The first field is a uint64 with the value
0x4d49544847554f52 ("ROUGHTIM" in ASCII). The second field is a
uint32 and contains the length of the third field. The third and
last field contains a Roughtime message as specified in Section 5.1.
0 1 2 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| 0x4d49544847554f52 (uint64) |
| ("ROUGHTIM") |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| Message length (uint32) |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| |
. .
. Roughtime message .
. .
| |
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Figure 2: Roughtime Packet Format
Roughtime request and response packets MUST be transmitted in a
single datagram when the UDP transport mode is used. Setting the
packet's don't fragment bit [RFC0791] is OPTIONAL in IPv4 networks.
Multiple requests and responses can be exchanged over an established
TCP connection. Clients MAY send multiple requests at once and
servers MAY send responses out of order. The connection SHOULD be
closed by the client when it has no more requests to send and has
received all expected responses. Either side SHOULD close the
connection in response to synchronization, format, implementation-
defined timeouts, or other errors.
All requests and responses MUST contain the VER tag. It contains a
list of one or more uint32 version numbers. The version of Roughtime
specified by this memo has version number 1.
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NOTE TO RFC EDITOR: remove this paragraph before publication. For
testing drafts of this memo, a version number of 0x80000000 plus the
draft number is used.
6.1. Requests
A request MUST contain the tags VER and NONC. Tags other than NONC
and VER SHOULD be ignored by the server. A future version of this
protocol may mandate additional tags in the message and asign them
semantic meaning.
The size of the request message SHOULD be at least 1024 bytes when
the UDP transport mode is used. To attain this size the PAD tag
SHOULD be added to the message. Its value SHOULD be all zeros.
Responding to requests shorter than 1024 bytes is OPTIONAL and
servers MUST NOT send responses larger than the requests they are
replying to.
6.1.1. VER
In a request, the VER tag contains a list of versions. The VER tag
MUST include at least one Roughtime version supported by the client.
The client MUST ensure that the version numbers and tags included in
the request are not incompatible with each other or the packet
contents.
6.1.2. NONC
The value of the NONC tag is a 32 byte nonce. It SHOULD be generated
in a manner indistinguishable from random. BCP 106 contains specific
guidelines regarding this [RFC4086].
6.2. Responses
A response MUST contain the tags SIG, VER, NONC, PATH, SREP, CERT,
and INDX.
6.2.1. SIG
In general, a SIG tag value is a 64 byte Ed25519 signature [RFC8032]
over a concatenation of a signature context ASCII string and the
entire value of a tag. All context strings MUST include a
terminating zero byte.
The SIG tag in the root of a response MUST be a signature over the
SREP value using the public key contained in CERT. The context
string MUST be "RoughTime v1 response signature".
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6.2.2. VER
In a response, the VER tag MUST contain a single version number. It
SHOULD be one of the version numbers supplied by the client in its
request. The server MUST ensure that the version number corresponds
with the rest of the packet contents.
6.2.3. NONC
The NONC tag MUST contain the nonce of the message being responded
to.
6.2.4. PATH
The PATH tag value MUST be a multiple of 32 bytes long and represent
a path of 32 byte hash values in the Merkle tree used to generate the
ROOT value as described in Section 6.3. In the case where a response
is prepared for a single request and the Merkle tree contains only
the root node, the size of PATH MUST be zero.
6.2.5. SREP
The SREP tag contains a time response. Its value MUST be a Roughtime
message with the tags ROOT, MIDP, and RADI. The server MAY include
any of the tags DUT1, DTAI, and LEAP in the contents of the SREP tag.
The ROOT tag MUST contain a 32 byte value of a Merkle tree root as
described in Section 6.3.
The MIDP tag value MUST be timestamp of the moment of processing.
The RADI tag value MUST be a uint32 representing the server's
estimate of the accuracy of MIDP in microseconds. Servers MUST
ensure that the true time is within (MIDP-RADI, MIDP+RADI) at the
time they transmit the response message.
The DUT1 tag value MUST be an int32 indicating the predicted
difference between UT1 and UTC (UT1 - UTC) in milliseconds as given
by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service
(IERS).
The DTAI tag value MUST be an int32 indicating the current difference
between International Atomic Time (TAI) and UTC (TAI - UTC) in
milliseconds as published in the International Bureau of Weights and
Measures' (BIPM) Circular T.
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The LEAP tag MUST contain zero or more int32 values, each
representing a past or future leap second event. Positive values
represent the addition of a second and negative values represent the
removal of a second. The absolute value represents the MJD of the
day that begins immediately after the leap second event.
By way of illustration, there was a leap second 31 December 2016
23:59:60. This event would be represented by the tag with numeric
value 57754. The positive sign represents that there was an
additional second inserted, the numeric value indicates 1 January
2017, the following day that began at midnight after the addition.
The leap second events MUST be sorted in reverse chronological order
and the first item MUST be the last (past or future) leap second
event that the server knows about. A LEAP tag with zero int32 values
indicates that the server does not hold any updated leap second
information.
6.2.6. CERT
The CERT tag contains a public-key certificate signed with the
server's long-term key. Its value is a Roughtime message with the
tags DELE and SIG, where SIG is a signature over the DELE value. The
context string used to generate SIG MUST be "RoughTime v1 delegation
signature--".
The DELE tag contains a delegated public-key certificate used by the
server to sign the SREP tag. Its value is a Roughtime message with
the tags MINT, MAXT, and PUBK. The purpose of the DELE tag is to
enable separation of a long-term public key from keys on devices
exposed to the public Internet.
The MINT tag is the minimum timestamp for which the key in PUBK is
trusted to sign responses. MIDP MUST be more than or equal to MINT
for a response to be considered valid.
The MAXT tag is the maximum timestamp for which the key in PUBK is
trusted to sign responses. MIDP MUST be less than or equal to MAXT
for a response to be considered valid.
The PUBK tag contains a temporary 32 byte Ed25519 public key which is
used to sign the SREP tag.
6.2.7. INDX
The INDX tag value is a uint32 determining the position of NONC in
the Merkle tree used to generate the ROOT value as described in
Section 6.3.
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6.3. The Merkle Tree
A Merkle tree is a binary tree where the value of each non-leaf node
is a hash value derived from its two children. The root of the tree
is thus dependent on all leaf nodes.
In Roughtime, each leaf node in the Merkle tree represents the nonce
in one request. Leaf nodes are indexed left to right, beginning with
zero.
The values of all nodes are calculated from the leaf nodes and up
towards the root node using the first 32 bytes of the output of the
SHA-512 hash algorithm [SHS]. For leaf nodes, the byte 0x00 is
prepended to the nonce before applying the hash function. For all
other nodes, the byte 0x01 is concatenated with first the left and
then the right child node value before applying the hash function.
The value of the Merkle tree's root node is included in the ROOT tag
of the response.
The index of a request's nonce node is included in the INDX tag of
the response.
The values of all sibling nodes in the path between a request's nonce
node and the root node is stored in the PATH tag so that the client
can reconstruct and validate the value in the ROOT tag using its
nonce. These values are each 32 bytes and are stored one after the
other with no additional padding or structure. The order in which
they are stored is described in Section 6.3.1
6.3.1. Root Value Validity Check Algorithm
We describe how to compute the hash of the Merkel tree from the
values in the tags PATH, INDX, and NONC. Our algorithm maintains a
current hash value. The bits of INDX are ordered from least to most
significant in this algorithm.
At initialization hash is set to H(0x00 || nonce).
If no more entries remain in PATH the current hash is the hash of the
Merkel tree. All remaining bits of INDX must be zero.
Otherwise let node be the next 32 bytes in PATH. If the current bit
in INDX is 0 then hash = H(0x01 || node || hash), else hash =
H(0x01 || hash || node).
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6.4. Validity of Response
A client MUST check the following properties when it receives a
response. We assume the long-term server public key is known to the
client through other means.
* The signature in CERT was made with the long-term key of the
server.
* The DELE timestamps and the MIDP value are consistent.
* The INDX and PATH values prove NONC was included in the Merkle
tree with value ROOT using the algorithm in Section 6.3.1.
* The signature of SREP in SIG validates with the public key in
DELE.
A response that passes these checks is said to be valid. Validity of
a response does not prove the time is correct, but merely that the
server signed it, and thus promises that it began to compute the
signature at a time in the interval (MIDP-RADI, MIDP+RADI).
7. Integration Into NTP
We assume that there is a bound PHI on the frequency error in the
clock on the machine. Given a measurement taken at a local time t,
we know the true time is in (t-delta-sigma, t-delta+sigma). After d
seconds have elapsed we know the true time is within (t-delta-sigma-
d*PHI, t-delta+sigma+d*PHI). A simple and effective way to mix with
NTP or PTP discipline of the clock is to trim the observed intervals
in NTP to fit entirely within this window or reject measurements that
fall to far outside. This assumes time has not been stepped. If the
NTP process decides to step the time, it MUST use Roughtime to ensure
the new truetime estimate that will be stepped to is consistent with
the true time.
Should this window become too large, another Roughtime measurement is
called for. The definition of "too large" is implementation defined.
Implementations MAY use other, more sophisticated means of adjusting
the clock respecting Roughtime information. Other applications such
as X.509 verification may wish to
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8. Grease
Servers MAY send back a fraction of responses that are syntactically
invalid or contain invalid signatures as well as incorrect times.
Clients MUST properly reject such responses. Servers MUST NOT send
back responses with incorrect times and valid signatures. Either
signature MAY be invalid for this application.
9. Roughtime Servers
NOTE TO RFC EDITOR: remove this section before publication.
The below list contains a list of servers with their public keys in
Base64 format. These servers may implement older versions of this
specification.
address: roughtime.cloudflare.com
port: 2002
long-term key: gD63hSj3ScS+wuOeGrubXlq35N1c5Lby/S+T7MNTjxo=
address: roughtime.int08h.com
port: 2002
long-term key: AW5uAoTSTDfG5NfY1bTh08GUnOqlRb+HVhbJ3ODJvsE=
address: roughtime.sandbox.google.com
port: 2002
long-term key: etPaaIxcBMY1oUeGpwvPMCJMwlRVNxv51KK/tktoJTQ=
address: roughtime.se
port: 2002
long-term key: S3AzfZJ5CjSdkJ21ZJGbxqdYP/SoE8fXKY0+aicsehI=
10. Acknowledgements
Thomas Peterson corrected multiple nits. Peter Loethberg, Tal
Mizrahi, Ragnar Sundblad, Kristof Teichel, and the other members of
the NTP working group contributed comments and suggestions.
11. IANA Considerations
11.1. Service Name and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry
IANA is requested to allocate the following entry in the Service Name
and Transport Protocol Port Number Registry [RFC6335]:
Service Name: Roughtime
Transport Protocol: tcp,udp
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Assignee: IESG <iesg@ietf.org>
Contact: IETF Chair <chair@ietf.org>
Description: Roughtime time synchronization
Reference: [[this memo]]
Port Number: [[TBD1]], selected by IANA from the User Port range
11.2. Roughtime Version Registry
IANA is requested to create a new registry entitled "Roughtime
Version Registry". Entries shall have the following fields:
Version ID (REQUIRED): a 32-bit unsigned integer
Version name (REQUIRED): A short text string naming the version
being identified.
Reference (REQUIRED): A reference to a relevant specification
document.
The policy for allocation of new entries SHOULD be: IETF Review.
The initial contents of this registry shall be as follows:
+=======================+======================+===============+
| Version ID | Version name | Reference |
+=======================+======================+===============+
| 0x0 | Reserved | [[this memo]] |
+-----------------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x1 | Roughtime version 1 | [[this memo]] |
+-----------------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x2-0x7fffffff | Unassigned | |
+-----------------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x80000000-0xffffffff | Reserved for Private | [[this memo]] |
| | or Experimental use | |
+-----------------------+----------------------+---------------+
Table 2: Roughtime version assignments.
11.3. Roughtime Tag Registry
IANA is requested to create a new registry entitled "Roughtime Tag
Registry". Entries SHALL have the following fields:
Tag (REQUIRED): A 32-bit unsigned integer in hexadecimal format.
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ASCII Representation (OPTIONAL): The ASCII representation of the
tag in accordance with Section 5.1.4 of this memo, if applicable.
Reference (REQUIRED): A reference to a relevant specification
document.
The policy for allocation of new entries in this registry SHOULD be:
Specification Required.
The initial contents of this registry SHALL be as follows:
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+============+======================+===============+
| Tag | ASCII Representation | Reference |
+============+======================+===============+
| 0x00444150 | PAD | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x00474953 | SIG | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x00524556 | VER | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x31545544 | DUT1 | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x434e4f4e | NONC | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x454c4544 | DELE | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x48544150 | PATH | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x49415444 | DTAI | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x49444152 | RADI | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x4b425550 | PUBK | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x5041454c | LEAP | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x5044494d | MIDP | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x50455253 | SREP | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x544e494d | MINT | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x544f4f52 | ROOT | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x54524543 | CERT | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x5458414d | MAXT | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
| 0x58444e49 | INDX | [[this memo]] |
+------------+----------------------+---------------+
Table 3: Roughtime tags.
12. Security Considerations
Since the only supported signature scheme, Ed25519, is not quantum
resistant, the Roughtime version described in this memo will not
survive the advent of quantum computers.
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Maintaining a list of trusted servers and adjudicating violations of
the rules by servers is not discussed in this document and is
essential for security. Roughtime clients MUST regularly update
their view of which servers are trustworthy in order to benefit from
the detection of misbehavior.
Validating timestamps made on different dates requires knowledge of
leap seconds in order to calculate time intervals correctly.
Servers carry out a significant amount of computation in response to
clients, and thus may experience vulnerability to denial of service
attacks.
This protocol does not provide any confidentiality. Given the nature
of timestamps such impact is minor.
The compromise of a PUBK's private key, even past MAXT, is a problem
as the private key can be used to sign invalid times that are in the
range MINT to MAXT, and thus violate the good behavior guarantee of
the server.
Servers MUST NOT send response packets larger than the request
packets sent by clients, in order to prevent amplification attacks.
13. Privacy Considerations
This protocol is designed to obscure all client identifiers. Servers
necessarily have persistent long-term identities essential to
enforcing correct behavior.
Generating nonces in a nonrandom manner can cause leaks of private
data or enable tracking of clients as they move between networks.
14. References
14.1. Normative References
[ITU-R_TF.457-2]
ITU-R, "Use of the Modified Julian Date by the Standard-
Frequency and Time-Signal Services", ITU-R
Recommendation TF.457-2, October 1997.
[ITU-R_TF.460-6]
ITU-R, "Standard-Frequency and Time-Signal Emissions",
ITU-R Recommendation TF.460-6, February 2002.
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[RFC0020] Cerf, V., "ASCII format for network interchange", STD 80,
RFC 20, DOI 10.17487/RFC0020, October 1969,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc20>.
[RFC6335] Cotton, M., Eggert, L., Touch, J., Westerlund, M., and S.
Cheshire, "Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
Procedures for the Management of the Service Name and
Transport Protocol Port Number Registry", BCP 165,
RFC 6335, DOI 10.17487/RFC6335, August 2011,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc6335>.
[RFC8032] Josefsson, S. and I. Liusvaara, "Edwards-Curve Digital
Signature Algorithm (EdDSA)", RFC 8032,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8032, January 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8032>.
[RFC8259] Bray, T., Ed., "The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data
Interchange Format", STD 90, RFC 8259,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8259, December 2017,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8259>.
[SHS] National Institute of Standards and Technology, "Secure
Hash Standard", DOI 10.6028/NIST.FIPS.180-4, FIPS 180-4,
August 2015, <https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.FIPS.180-4>.
14.2. Informative References
[Autokey] Rottger, S., "Analysis of the NTP Autokey Procedures",
2012, <https://zero-entropy.de/autokey_analysis.pdf>.
[DelayAttacks]
Mizrahi, T., "A Game Theoretic Analysis of Delay Attacks
Against Time Synchronization Protocols",
DOI 10.1109/ISPCS.2012.6336612, 2012,
<https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6336612>.
[MCBG] Malhotra, A., Cohen, I., Brakke, E., and S. Goldberg,
"Attacking the Network Time Protocol", 2015,
<https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1020>.
[RFC0768] Postel, J., "User Datagram Protocol", STD 6, RFC 768,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0768, August 1980,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc768>.
[RFC0791] Postel, J., "Internet Protocol", STD 5, RFC 791,
DOI 10.17487/RFC0791, September 1981,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc791>.
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[RFC0793] Postel, J., "Transmission Control Protocol", STD 7,
RFC 793, DOI 10.17487/RFC0793, September 1981,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc793>.
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC4086] Eastlake 3rd, D., Schiller, J., and S. Crocker,
"Randomness Requirements for Security", BCP 106, RFC 4086,
DOI 10.17487/RFC4086, June 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4086>.
[RFC5905] Mills, D., Martin, J., Ed., Burbank, J., and W. Kasch,
"Network Time Protocol Version 4: Protocol and Algorithms
Specification", RFC 5905, DOI 10.17487/RFC5905, June 2010,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc5905>.
[RFC7384] Mizrahi, T., "Security Requirements of Time Protocols in
Packet Switched Networks", RFC 7384, DOI 10.17487/RFC7384,
October 2014, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7384>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8573] Malhotra, A. and S. Goldberg, "Message Authentication Code
for the Network Time Protocol", RFC 8573,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8573, June 2019,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8573>.
[RFC8915] Franke, D., Sibold, D., Teichel, K., Dansarie, M., and R.
Sundblad, "Network Time Security for the Network Time
Protocol", RFC 8915, DOI 10.17487/RFC8915, September 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8915>.
Appendix A. Terms and Abbreviations
ASCII American Standard Code for Information Interchange
IANA Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
JSON JavaScript Object Notation [RFC8259]
MJD Modified Julian Date
NTP Network Time Protocol [RFC5905]
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NTS Network Time Security [RFC8915]
TAI International Atomic Time (Temps Atomique International)
[ITU-R_TF.460-6]
TCP Transmission Control Protocol [RFC0793]
UDP User Datagram Protocol [RFC0768]
UT Universal Time [ITU-R_TF.460-6]
UTC Coordinated Universal Time [ITU-R_TF.460-6]
Authors' Addresses
Aanchal Malhotra
Boston University
111 Cummington Mall
Boston, MA 02215
United States of America
Email: aanchal4@bu.edu
Adam Langley
Google
Email: agl@google.com
Watson Ladd
Sealance, Inc.
Email: watsonbladd@gmail.com
Marcus Dansarie
Email: marcus@dansarie.se
URI: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9246-0263
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