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Researchers Warn Computer Clocks Can Be Easily Scrambled Via NTP Flaws (networkworld.com)
alphadogg writes: Researchers at Boston University said this week that they've found flaws in the Network Time Protocol (NTP), a 30-year-old Internet protocol whose security shortcomings could undermine encrypted communications and even jam up bitcoin transactions. The importance of NTP was highlighted in a 2012 incident in which two servers run by the U.S. Navy rolled back their clocks 12 years, deciding it was the year 2000. Computers that checked in with the Navy's servers and adjusted their clocks accordingly had a variety of problems with their phones systems, routers and authentication systems.
There is at least one alternative out there, and reason to use it.
There is at least one alternative out there
Whoever proposed tlsdate as an alternative to NTP has no idea how either NTP or tlsdate work. What moving to tlsdate is doing is replacing a well-designed clock-synchronisation protocol talking to precise time servers with an opportunistic gimme-whatver-time-you've-got mechanism that returns a one-off estimate of an approximate time on a web server, assuming the server doesn't just set the time field to random bytes as many do. They're totally different things.
If you're really worried about this, run your own stratum 1 clock and serve NTP off that. If you're worried about the cost of a dedicated NTP server, build it yourself using any number of instructions on the Internet, e.g. these ones.