Re: [Ntp] NTPv5 draft

[James <[e-mail]>]

On 01-12-2020 08:12, Miroslav Lichvar wrote:
>> I very much agree with Jame’s proposed draft that a new
>> version of NTP must provide these mechanisms by default.  Sure, you can add
>> NTS to protect the NTPv5 packets. But in this case protection is always an
>> optional add-on whereas it needs to be an inherent part of the basic
>> protocol. To achieve this the NTS approach certainly can be transferred to
>> the basic v5 protocol and packet format.
> You mean to require all NTP packets to be authenticated? I don't like
> that idea. The improvements in NTPv5 are orthogonal to authentication.
> NTPv5 is not supposed to be more secure. An NTP client that doesn't
> want to implement the complexity of NTS shouldn't be restricted to
> NTPv4.

Given that largest number of deployments of NTPv4 operate on public 
internet, if our intention is to have a protocol to supersede NTPv4 and 
solve the issues of those existing use cases, the protocol must provide 
mitigation to the existing threats of both server malfeasance and 
middlebox tampering and prevent downgrading that would enable either. 
NTS is not the only option and roughtime has shown it is possible to 
provide authentication primitives as a core part of the protocol without 
the larger overheads that a bolt-on requires.

- J