Switch from memcmp() to the new constant-time function to compare the
received and expected authentication data generated with a symmetric key
(NTP MAC or AES CMAC).
While this doesn't seem to be strictly necessary with the current
code, it is a recommended practice to prevent timing attacks. If
memcmp() compared the MACs one byte at a time (a typical memcmp()
implementation works with wider integers for better performance) and
chronyd as an NTP client/server/peer was leaking the timing of the
comparison (e.g. in the monitoring protocol), an attacker might be able
for a given NTP request or response find in a sequence the individual
bytes of the MAC by observing differences in the timing over a large
number of attempts. However, this process would likely be so slow the
authenticated request or response would not be useful in a MITM attack
as the expected origin timestamp is changing with each poll.
Extend the keys unit test to compare the time the function takes to
compare two identical MACs and MACs differing in the first byte
(maximizing the timing difference). It should fail if the compiler's
optimizations figure out the function can return early. The test is not
included in the util unit test to avoid compile-time optimizations with
the function and its caller together. The test can be disabled by
setting NO_TIMING_TESTS environment variable if it turns out to be
unreliable.
Don't allow the NTP support and asynchronous name resolving to be
disabled. pthreads are now a hard requirement.
NTP is the primary task of chrony. This functionality doesn't seem to be
commonly disabled (allowing only refclocks and manual input).
This removes rarely (if ever) used code and simplifies testing.
The daemon transmit timestamps are precompensated for the time it takes
to generate a MAC using a symmetric key (as measured on chronyd start)
and also an average round-trip time of the Samba signing of MS-SNTP
responses. This improves accuracy of the transmit timestamp, but it
has some issues.
The correction has a random error which is changing over time due to
variable CPU frequency, system load, migration to a different machine,
etc. If the measured delay is too large, the correction may cause the
transmit timestamp to be later than the actual transmission. Also, the
delay is measured for a packet of a minimal length with no extension
fields, and there is no support for NTS.
Drop the precompensation in favor of the interleaved mode, which now
avoids the authentication delay even when no kernel/hardware timestamps
are available.
If the -Q option is specified, disable by default pidfile, ntpport,
cmdport, Unix domain command socket, and clock control, in order to
allow starting chronyd without root privileges and/or when another
chronyd instance is already running.
