Paper 2015/1020
Attacking the Network Time Protocol
Aanchal Malhotra, Isaac E. Cohen, Erik Brakke, and Sharon Goldberg
Abstract
We explore the risk that network attackers can exploit unauthenticated Network Time Protocol (NTP) traffic to alter the time on client systems. We first discuss how an on-path attacker, that hijacks traffic to an NTP server, can quickly shift time on the server's clients. Then, we present a extremely low-rate (single packet) denial-of-service attack that an off-path attacker, located anywhere on the network, can use to disable NTP clock synchronization on a client. Next, we show how an off-path attacker can exploit IPv4 packet fragmentation to shift time on a client. We discuss the implications on these attacks on other core Internet protocols, quantify their attack surface using Internet measurements, and suggest a few simple countermeasures that can improve the security of NTP.
Note: Revised according to NDSS'16 reviewer comments.
Metadata
- Available format(s)
-
PDF
- Publication info
- Published elsewhere. Minor revision. NDSS '16, 21-24 February 2016, San Diego, CA, USA
- DOI
- 10.14722/ndss.2016.23090
- Keywords
- network securitynetwork time protocolNTPoff-path attacksdenial of service
- Contact author(s)
- goldbe @ cs bu edu
- History
- 2016-01-07: last of 2 revisions
- 2015-10-23: received
- See all versions
- Short URL
- https://ia.cr/2015/1020
- License
-
CC BY
BibTeX
@misc{cryptoeprint:2015/1020,
author = {Aanchal Malhotra and Isaac E. Cohen and Erik Brakke and Sharon Goldberg},
title = {Attacking the Network Time Protocol},
howpublished = {Cryptology {ePrint} Archive, Paper 2015/1020},
year = {2015},
doi = {10.14722/ndss.2016.23090},
url = {https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/1020}
}
