doc: warn that unauthenticated peers are vulnerable to DoS attack

This commit is contained in:
Miroslav Lichvar 2015-04-10 10:35:21 +02:00
parent ad942e352d
commit 88b76f49cc

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@ -2543,6 +2543,21 @@ be reported using the @code{clients} command in @code{chronyc}.
The syntax of this directive is identical to that for the @code{server}
directive (@pxref{server directive}), except that it is used to specify
an NTP peer rather than an NTP server.
Please note that NTP peers that are not configured with a key to enable
authentication are vulnerable to a denial-of-service attack. An attacker
knowing that NTP hosts A and B are peering with each other can send a packet
with random timestamps to host A with source address of B which will set the
NTP state variables on A to the values sent by the attacker. Host A will then
send on its next poll to B a packet with originate timestamp that doesn't match
the transmit timestamp of B and the packet will be dropped. If the attacker
does this periodically for both hosts, they won't be able to synchronize to
each other.
This attack can be prevented by enabling authentication with the key option, or
using the @code{server} directive on both sides to specify the other host as a
server instead of peer, the only drawback is that it will double the network
traffic between the two hosts.
@c }}}
@c {{{ pidfile
@node pidfile directive