Awesome
Roughenough
Roughenough is an RFC-draft compliant Roughtime secure time synchronization client and server implementation in Rust.
Roughenough's server and client are functionally complete and at feature parity with the reference C++ and Golang implementations.
Requires latest stable Rust to compile. Contributions welcome, see CONTRIBUTING for instructions and limitations for areas that could use attention.
RFC Work-In-Progress
Roughenough implements the Roughtime protocol as specified in the draft-11 RFC.
The Roughenough server operates both the "classic" protocol and the RFC compliant protocol at the same time on a single serving port (the 8-byte magic frame value added by the RFC is used to distinguish classic vs. RFC requests).
The new -p/--protocol
flag of roughenough-client
controls the protocol version to
use in requests. 0
= classic protocol (no VER
tag), 1
= anticipated RFC protocol
(VER
tag with value 0x00000001
), and 8
is the RFC Draft11 protocol (VER
tag with
value 0x0b000008
). The default is 0
the "classic" protocol, until the RFC is finalized.
# send RFC protocol Roughtime requests
$ roughenough-client -p 1 roughtime.int08h.com 2002
Links
- Roughenough Github repo
- Original Roughtime project
- My blog posts giving a technical deep-dive into Roughtime and exploring details of on-the-wire Roughtime messages.
- Cloudflare's fantastic blog post and accompanying open-source project.
Building and Running
Minimum Supported Rust Version (MSRV)
Roughenough uses 2021 edition features and requires Rust 1.72 or newer to build.
Building
# Build roughenough
$ cargo build --release
The client binary is target/release/roughenough-client
. After building you can copy the
binary and run on its own (no cargo
needed) if you wish.
$ cp target/release/roughenough-client /usr/local/bin
Using the Client to Query a Roughtime Server
$ target/debug/roughenough-client -v roughtime.cloudflare.com 2002
Requesting time from: "roughtime.cloudflare.com":2002
Received time from server: midpoint="May 19 2024 16:18:10 -05:00", radius=1000000, verified=No (merkle_index=0)
May 19 2024 16:18:10 -05:00
Setting The System Time on Linux
You can use the date
utility on Linux machines to set the system time to the time determined by the Roughenough client:
sudo date --utc --set "$(roughenough-client -z roughtime.int08h.com 2002)"
Setting The System Time on FreeBSD
You can use the date
utility on FreeBSD machines to set the system time to the time determined by the Roughenough client:
sudo date -u "$(roughenough-client -z roughtime.int08h.com 2002 -f %Y%m%d%H%M.%S)"
Validating Server Responses
Use the -p
flag with the client to validate the server's response with its public key.
# The public key of 'roughtime.int08h.com' is stored in a DNS TXT record
$ host -t TXT roughtime.int08h.com
roughtime.int08h.com descriptive text "AW5uAoTSTDfG5NfY1bTh08GUnOqlRb+HVhbJ3ODJvsE="
# Validate the server response using its public key
$ target/release/roughenough-client -v roughtime.int08h.com 2002 -k "AW5uAoTSTDfG5NfY1bTh08GUnOqlRb+HVhbJ3ODJvsE="
Requesting time from: "roughtime.int08h.com":2002
Received time from server: midpoint="Oct 26 2018 23:22:20", radius=1000000, verified=Yes (merkle_index=0)
Oct 26 2018 23:22:20
The verified=Yes
in the output confirms that the server's response had a valid signature.
Server Configuration
There are two (mutually exclusive) ways to configure the Roughenough server:
- A YAML file, or
- Environment variables
The server accepts the following configuration parameters:
YAML Key | Environment Variable | Necessity | Description |
---|---|---|---|
interface | ROUGHENOUGH_INTERFACE | Required | IP address or interface name for listening to client requests |
port | ROUGHENOUGH_PORT | Required | UDP port to listen for requests |
seed | ROUGHENOUGH_SEED | Required | A 32-byte hexadecimal value used to generate the server's long-term key pair. This is a secret value and must be un-guessable, treat it with care. (If compiled with KMS support, length will vary; see Optional Features) |
batch_size | ROUGHENOUGH_BATCH_SIZE | Optional | The maximum number of requests to process in one batch. All nonces in a batch are used to build a Merkle tree, the root of which is signed. Default is 64 requests per batch. |
status_interval | ROUGHENOUGH_STATUS_INTERVAL | Optional | Number of seconds between each logged status update. Default is 600 seconds (10 minutes). |
health_check_port | ROUGHENOUGH_HEALTH_CHECK_PORT | Optional | If present, enable an HTTP health check responder on the provided port. Use with caution, see Optional Features. |
kms_protection | ROUGHENOUGH_KMS_PROTECTION | Optional | If compiled with KMS support, the ID of the KMS key used to protect the long-term identity. See Optional Features. |
fault_percentage | ROUGHENOUGH_FAULT_PERCENTAGE | Optional | Likelihood (as a percentage) that the server will intentionally return an invalid client response. An integer range from 0 (disabled, all responses valid) to 50 (50% of responses will be invalid). Default is 0 (disabled). |
YAML Configuration
The table above lists the YAML keys available in the config file. An example:
interface: 127.0.0.1
port: 8686
seed: f61075c988feb9cb700a4a6a3291bfbc9cab11b9c9eca8c802468eb38a43d7d3
Provide the config file as the single command-line argument to the Roughenough server binary:
$ /path/to/roughenough-server /path/to/config.yaml
Environment Configuration
Roughenough can be configured via the ROUGHENOUGH_*
environment variables
listed in the table above. Start the server with a single ENV
argument to have Roughenough configure itself
from the environment. Example:
$ export ROUGHENOUGH_INTERFACE=127.0.0.1
$ export ROUGHENOUGH_PORT=8686
$ export ROUGHENOUGH_SEED=f61075c988feb9cb700a4a6a3291bfbc9cab11b9c9eca8c802468eb38a43d7d3
$ /path/to/roughenough-server ENV
Starting the Server
# Build roughenough
$ cargo build --release
# Via a config file
$ target/release/roughenough-server example.cfg
2018-07-25 00:05:09 INFO [server] Roughenough server v1.0.5 starting
2018-07-25 00:05:09 INFO [server] Long-term public key: d0756ee69ff5fe96cbcf9273208fec53124b1dd3a24d3910e07c7c54e2473012
2018-07-25 00:05:09 INFO [server] Ephemeral public key: 25fd5dc31ceee241aed3e643534e95ed0609e9a20982a45ac0312a5f55e2cc66
2018-07-25 00:05:09 INFO [server] Server listening on 127.0.0.1:8686
# Or using environment variables
$ export ROUGHENOUGH_INTERFACE=127.0.0.1
$ export ROUGHENOUGH_PORT=8686
$ export ROUGHENOUGH_SEED=f61075c988feb9cb700a4a6a3291bfbc9cab11b9c9eca8c802468eb38a43d7d3
$ target/release/roughenough-server ENV
2018-07-25 00:05:09 INFO [server] Roughenough server v1.0.5 starting
2018-07-25 00:05:09 INFO [server] Long-term public key: d0756ee69ff5fe96cbcf9273208fec53124b1dd3a24d3910e07c7c54e2473012
2018-07-25 00:05:09 INFO [server] Ephemeral public key: 25fd5dc31ceee241aed3e643534e95ed0609e9a20982a45ac0312a5f55e2cc66
2018-07-25 00:05:09 INFO [server] Server listening on 127.0.0.1:8686
The resulting binary is target/release/roughenough-server
. After building you can copy the
binary and run on its own (no cargo
needed):
$ cp target/release/roughenough-server /usr/local/bin
Stopping the Server
Use Ctrl-C or kill
the process.
Optional Features
Roughenough has two opt-in (disabled by default) features that are enabled either A) via a config setting, or B) at compile-time.
- HTTP Health Check responder to facilitate detection and replacement of "sick" Roughenough servers.
- Key Management System (KMS) support to protect the long-term server identity using envelope encryption and AWS or Google KMS.
See OPTIONAL-FEATURES.md for details and instructions how to enable and use.
Limitations
Roughtime features not implemented by the server:
- On-line (while server is running) key rotation. The server must be restarted to generate a new delegated key.
- The Roughenough server depends on the host's time source to comply with the smeared leap-second
requirement of the Roughtime protocol. A Roughenough server sourcing time from
Google's public NTP servers would produce compliant
smeared leap-seconds but time sourced from members of
pool.ntp.org
likely will not.
About the Roughtime Protocol
Roughtime is a protocol that aims to achieve rough time synchronisation in a secure way that doesn't depend on any particular time server, and in such a way that, if a time server does misbehave, clients end up with cryptographic proof of it. It was created by Adam Langley and Robert Obryk.
Contributors
- Stuart Stock (stuart {at} int08h.com)
- Aaron Hill (aa1ronham {at} gmail.com)
- Peter Todd (pete {at} petertodd.org)
- Muncan90 (github.com/muncan90)
- Zicklag (github.com/zicklag)
- Greg at Unrelenting Tech (github.com/unrelentingtech)
- Eric Swanson (github.com/lachesis)
Copyright and License
Roughenough is copyright (c) 2017-2024 int08h LLC. All rights reserved.
int08h LLC licenses Roughenough (the "Software") to you under the Apache License, version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this Software except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License from the LICENSE file included with the Software or at:
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.