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What authentication methods use the system clock to assist authentication?

I have encountered issues in the past with CA and my system clock being slightly out of what sync with what it should be in terms of seconds and minutes, but not hour.

What methods in particular will use the system clock to authenticate?

4 Answers 4

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Kerberos is time-critical and won't work if the server and the client are too much out of sync.

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No authentication methods use the clock to authenticate, but many use the clock (and differences between server and client) as an additional method of checking validity.

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Almost all remote authentication requires time on the client and server to be in sync. Perhaps not directly, but at some level. As SvW mentions, Kerberos in particular is very finicky about time, and anything more than roughly 4 minutes of skew will cause failed authentication. If this is a concern, set up NTP.

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What about an RSA SecurId?

That has a built in clock which generates a new key every 60 seconds from the current time (and I assume a private key of some sort), that is used for two factor authentication.

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