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by creeble 801 days ago
You can use plain HTTP for time sync. Almost all HTTP servers respond with a time header.
1 comments

The whole point of the exercise was to make it secure though. If you don't care about MITM attackers then NTP works great.
I don't get the supposed security aspect of getting false time. Hacker gives you 1980-01-01 or 4096-13-32 and mess up CRL and ruin your day...how.

Years ago I've tried privilege escalation exploit to play with a phone and it involved rolling back date to unexpire signature, so I know there is exploit potential, but it... it just feels like RTC bootstrap problem should be something solvable.

Isn't that a provably pointless exercise though?

Security protocols (at least the ones in common use) require certificates or keys that eventually expire, because of the risk of a permanent key being compromised. If they expire, the protocol needs time. QED.