Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-11 Thread Carlin Bingham
On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, at 12:32 AM, Reyk Floeter wrote:
 Let me share the answer to a question that I got in a private mail:
 
  On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:55:53AM +0100, Reyk Floeter wrote:
  ---snip---
  servers pool.ntp.org
  constraints from https://www.google.com/search?q=openntpd;
  constraints from www.twitter.com
  constraint from www.apple.com
  ---snap---
 
  
  Is the last constraint in singular pointing to www.apple.com valid or is
  it a typo?
 
 
 Yes, it is valid.  As mentioned in the man page, it works like the
 existing server vs. servers for NTP peers.
 
 When a hostname or URL is specified, ntpd(8) will resolve the host.
 The singular version will use only one of the returned IP addresses
 and the plural version will use it as a pool and use all of the
 returned IP addresses.
 
 Following the example, a dig A on www.google.com or www.apple.com
 will typically show you a number of addresses, while the Akamai-hosted
 www.apple.com only returns one address near you.  You're free to use
 any host, and some people might prefer to use their own trusted
 servers, I just picked some examples with good availability and
 seemingly good time.
 
 Reyk
 

Using `constraints` I see it trying to query both the IPv4 addresses and
the IPv6 addresses that the hostname resolves to, even though the
machine has no IPv6 access. Is this expected?

--
Carlin



Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-11 Thread Reyk Floeter
On Thu, Feb 12, 2015 at 02:05:59AM +1300, Carlin Bingham wrote:
 On Wed, 11 Feb 2015, at 12:32 AM, Reyk Floeter wrote:
  Let me share the answer to a question that I got in a private mail:
  
   On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:55:53AM +0100, Reyk Floeter wrote:
   ---snip---
   servers pool.ntp.org
   constraints from https://www.google.com/search?q=openntpd;
   constraints from www.twitter.com
   constraint from www.apple.com
   ---snap---
  
   
   Is the last constraint in singular pointing to www.apple.com valid or is
   it a typo?
  
  
  Yes, it is valid.  As mentioned in the man page, it works like the
  existing server vs. servers for NTP peers.
  
  When a hostname or URL is specified, ntpd(8) will resolve the host.
  The singular version will use only one of the returned IP addresses
  and the plural version will use it as a pool and use all of the
  returned IP addresses.
  
  Following the example, a dig A on www.google.com or www.apple.com
  will typically show you a number of addresses, while the Akamai-hosted
  www.apple.com only returns one address near you.  You're free to use
  any host, and some people might prefer to use their own trusted
  servers, I just picked some examples with good availability and
  seemingly good time.
  
  Reyk
  
 
 Using `constraints` I see it trying to query both the IPv4 addresses and
 the IPv6 addresses that the hostname resolves to, even though the
 machine has no IPv6 access. Is this expected?
 

Yes, it is.  If the request to the IPv6 address fails, it will simply
ignore the host.  There is the AI_ADDRCONFIG flag in the resolver that
does what you want.  But I discussed it with Henning and we concluded
that ntpd MUST NOT use it - the availability of IPv6 at startup does
not necessarily mean that it will not be available later.  ntpd is a
long-running process that is also used on laptops etc. that move
between networks but ntpd keeps on running.

If you want to disable IPv6 lookups comepletely, put the following in
your /etc/resolv.conf:

family inet4

And remove family inet6 if you happen to find it in the file.

Reyk



Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-11 Thread Renaud Allard

On 02/10/2015 12:43 PM, Stuart Henderson wrote:

On 2015/02/10 12:32, Reyk Floeter wrote:

Let me share the answer to a question that I got in a private mail:


On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:55:53AM +0100, Reyk Floeter wrote:

---snip---
servers pool.ntp.org
constraints from https://www.google.com/search?q=openntpd;


Cue google turning on captchas for searches for openntpd ;-)




Won't the captcha page also include the date header? :)



Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-10 Thread Kevin Chadwick
On Tue, 10 Feb 2015 10:55:53 +0100
Reyk Floeter wrote:

 The standardized attempts to add authentication to NTP are a) fairly
 horrible (ASN.1 etc.) and b) rarely deployed.

When ntpd acts as a server, could the package signing code be of use
with ntpd keys?



Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-10 Thread Stuart Henderson
On 2015/02/10 12:32, Reyk Floeter wrote:
 Let me share the answer to a question that I got in a private mail:
 
  On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:55:53AM +0100, Reyk Floeter wrote:
  ---snip---
  servers pool.ntp.org
  constraints from https://www.google.com/search?q=openntpd;

Cue google turning on captchas for searches for openntpd ;-)



Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-10 Thread Kevin Chadwick
On Tue, 10 Feb 2015 13:03:27 +
David Dahlberg wrote:

   The standardized attempts to add authentication to NTP are a) fairly
   horrible (ASN.1 etc.) and b) rarely deployed.  
  
  When ntpd acts as a server, could the package signing code be of use
  with ntpd keys?  
 
 How exactly? You cannot use signing for PSK, Private Cert GK as they
 require peer-to-peer shared secrets. The rest of the autokey protocols
 do not provide any usable identity checks anyway. Nice read:
 http://zero-entropy.de/autokey_analysis.pdf
 
 The HTTPS-based scheme is at least able to link a rough time constraint
 to a PKI (which autokey is not even able to do) and it follows the
 general design approach of OpenNTPd: Being simple and good enough for
 most use cases.

I was meaning just for internal OpenBSD use between ntpds really (you
would still need a trusted or checked source with a decent crystal)
without resorting to handing axes out, outside the standards meeting
with the time_t pdf link enscribed in the handle ;-).



Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-10 Thread Reyk Floeter
On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:51:12PM -0700, Theo de Raadt wrote:
 So I gave Reyk some beer, and he did the impossible :-)
 

I sense a pattern here.

Reyk



Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-10 Thread Bob Beck
On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 11:19 PM, Reyk Floeter r...@openbsd.org wrote:
 On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 10:51:12PM -0700, Theo de Raadt wrote:
 So I gave Reyk some beer, and he did the impossible :-)


 I sense a pattern here.

 Reyk

Not enough samples to be a pattern yet.. You shouldn't worry..

It's too bad supporting IkeV1 in your software is impossible.



Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-10 Thread Henning Brauer
* Henning Brauer hb-openbsdt...@ml.bsws.de [2015-02-10 13:21]:
 * Kevin Chadwick ma1l1i...@yahoo.co.uk [2015-02-10 13:14]:
  On Tue, 10 Feb 2015 10:55:53 +0100
  Reyk Floeter wrote:
   The standardized attempts to add authentication to NTP are a) fairly
   horrible (ASN.1 etc.) and b) rarely deployed.
  When ntpd acts as a server, could the package signing code be of use
  with ntpd keys?
 getting the signature into the ntp packets in a way that doesn't break
 compatibility is the challenge.

let me elaborate slightly: even if we came up with a überauth
mechanism that doesn't suck and doesn't break compat, it wouldn't be
of much use unless the servers you sync from support it - one of the
pools for most. even if you could completely trust them and whatever
model of key distribution, for them to support this, you have to get it
standarized. and even if we managed to get it pushed through the
standards corpses^Wbodies, it would take ages until it gets deployed,
IF it ever gets widely deployed.
That's a lot of ifs, I leave the judgement on likeliness to you.

constraints from https, however - that works today.

-- 
Henning Brauer, h...@bsws.de, henn...@openbsd.org
BS Web Services GmbH, http://bsws.de, Full-Service ISP
Secure Hosting, Mail and DNS. Virtual  Dedicated Servers, Root to Fully Managed
Henning Brauer Consulting, http://henningbrauer.com/



Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-10 Thread Theo de Raadt
 * Henning Brauer hb-openbsdt...@ml.bsws.de [2015-02-10 13:21]:
  * Kevin Chadwick ma1l1i...@yahoo.co.uk [2015-02-10 13:14]:
   On Tue, 10 Feb 2015 10:55:53 +0100
   Reyk Floeter wrote:
The standardized attempts to add authentication to NTP are a) fairly
horrible (ASN.1 etc.) and b) rarely deployed.
   When ntpd acts as a server, could the package signing code be of use
   with ntpd keys?
  getting the signature into the ntp packets in a way that doesn't break
  compatibility is the challenge.
 
 let me elaborate slightly: even if we came up with a überauth
 mechanism that doesn't suck and doesn't break compat, it wouldn't be
 of much use unless the servers you sync from support it - one of the
 pools for most. even if you could completely trust them and whatever
 model of key distribution, for them to support this, you have to get it
 standarized. and even if we managed to get it pushed through the
 standards corpses^Wbodies, it would take ages until it gets deployed,
 IF it ever gets widely deployed.
 That's a lot of ifs, I leave the judgement on likeliness to you.
 
 constraints from https, however - that works today.

So full disclosure, this was my idea, though Reyk wrote the code.

I was struck by how 2 decades ago there was common practice to use
rdate -a, thus using the RFC 868 timed protocol.  It is a one-shot,
triggering a slide using the kernel adjtime system call.  Then ntp
showed up, kind of but it was heavy, and it became more common
practice to have small machines do rdate -an.  Once again, it is a
one-shot, triggering a slide using the kernel adjtime system call.
Such practice was good enough for most uses.  Some people did this in
cron.  ntp was just too large to compile, too complicated for
automatic setup, so it was rarely used back in those days.

Some time went by, and more people started using official NTP, but
we wavered, not liking the sourc code.

Finally openntpd arrived, designed to be light and secure -- enough so
we could run it in all circumstances.  It contains protection against
NTP packet spoofing, but cannot solve the NTP protocol MITM problems.

Recently, tlsdate showed up, which is basically rdate -TLS, and
perhaps it has an option like -a, but still that would be the
one-shot triggering a slide in the kernel.  Solving nothing new really
in terms of time quality...

However it struck me that we could use such a method to authenticate
information learned from NTP sources.  As long as the information was
handled correctly in one daemon.  Asyncronously, and very carefully,
using the privsep model for safety.

So I gave Reyk some beer, and he did the impossible :-)



Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-10 Thread David Dahlberg
Am Dienstag, den 10.02.2015, 12:35 + schrieb Kevin Chadwick:
 On Tue, 10 Feb 2015 10:55:53 +0100
 Reyk Floeter wrote:
 
  The standardized attempts to add authentication to NTP are a) fairly
  horrible (ASN.1 etc.) and b) rarely deployed.
 
 When ntpd acts as a server, could the package signing code be of use
 with ntpd keys?

How exactly? You cannot use signing for PSK, Private Cert GK as they
require peer-to-peer shared secrets. The rest of the autokey protocols
do not provide any usable identity checks anyway. Nice read:
http://zero-entropy.de/autokey_analysis.pdf

The HTTPS-based scheme is at least able to link a rough time constraint
to a PKI (which autokey is not even able to do) and it follows the
general design approach of OpenNTPd: Being simple and good enough for
most use cases.

-- 
David Dahlberg 

Fraunhofer FKIE, Dept. Communication Systems (KOM) | Tel: +49-228-9435-845
Fraunhoferstr. 20, 53343 Wachtberg, Germany| Fax: +49-228-856277



Re: Authenticated TLS contraints in ntpd(8)

2015-02-10 Thread Henning Brauer
* Kevin Chadwick ma1l1i...@yahoo.co.uk [2015-02-10 13:14]:
 On Tue, 10 Feb 2015 10:55:53 +0100
 Reyk Floeter wrote:
  The standardized attempts to add authentication to NTP are a) fairly
  horrible (ASN.1 etc.) and b) rarely deployed.
 When ntpd acts as a server, could the package signing code be of use
 with ntpd keys?

getting the signature into the ntp packets in a way that doesn't break
compatibility is the challenge.

-- 
Henning Brauer, h...@bsws.de, henn...@openbsd.org
BS Web Services GmbH, http://bsws.de, Full-Service ISP
Secure Hosting, Mail and DNS. Virtual  Dedicated Servers, Root to Fully Managed
Henning Brauer Consulting, http://henningbrauer.com/