Last updated 25 August 2025

Last updated 25 August 2025

ntpd can be vulnerable to Sybil attacks. If a system is set up to use a trustedkey and if one is not using the feature introduced in ntp-4.2.8p6 allowing an optional 4th field in the ntp.keys file to specify which IPs can serve time, a malicious authenticated peer -- i.e. one where the attacker knows the private symmetric key -- can create arbitrarily-many ephemeral associations in order to win the clock selection of ntpd and modify a victim's clock.

Ps.: This is possibly a incomplete fix for CVE-2016-1549.

References:

http://support.ntp.org/bin/view/Main/NtpBug3415