3 ms·

If NTPsec is immune to a bunch of vulnerabilities because they literally deleted all of the relevant code, that's disingenuous. It's not that they're immune, it

by eridius 10y ago

If NTPsec is immune to a bunch of vulnerabilities because they literally deleted all of the relevant code, that's disingenuous. It's not that they're immune, it's that they chose to literally throw away support for a whole bunch of functionality that NTP retained. You could argue that maybe people shouldn't be using that functionality anymore (though I don't know if that's a good argument, since I don't know what the actual functionality is or why NTPsec threw it away), but since people are using it, and since NTP Classic is the reference implementation for NTP (and therefore must implement all of NTP), I reject the notion that NTP Classic is automatically in the wrong for retaining this functionality.

PeterisP 10y ago
If product A implements a small subset of the functionality of product B, but that small subset is enough for your needs, then from a security perspective (other things being roughly equal) you should never ever use product B. It brings in additional risks for no good reason. By default, extra functionality is a cost and a drawback - if it's useful it may justify that cost, but otherwise removing that functionality is a very useful thing to do. If half of people need the 'deleted' functionality (and it seems that the proportion is much smaller, but let's assume half) then obviously they should use NTP Classic, but the other half definitely should not.
- eridius 10y ago
  Depending on what the deleted functionality is, vulnerabilities in that functionality may not affect you anyway even if you're using NTP Classic. If you're not using that functionality to begin with, then it's hard to be affected by vulnerabilities in it. I say "depending on what it is" because of course you can have functionality that, even though you don't care about it, you still can't actually turn off (e.g. a protocol server that implements commands you don't care about, but can't disable). It's not clear to me offhand whether the NTP Classic functionality that NTPsec deleted is the type that doesn't affect you if you don't use it, or if it's the type that can't be disabled.

by eridius 10y ago

PeterisP 10y ago

If product A implements a small subset of the functionality of product B, but that small subset is enough for your needs, then from a security perspective (other things being roughly equal) you should never ever use product B. It brings in additional risks for no good reason. By default, extra functionality is a cost and a drawback - if it's useful it may justify that cost, but otherwise removing that functionality is a very useful thing to do. If half of people need the 'deleted' functionality (and it seems that the proportion is much smaller, but let's assume half) then obviously they should use NTP Classic, but the other half definitely should not.

eridius 10y ago
Depending on what the deleted functionality is, vulnerabilities in that functionality may not affect you anyway even if you're using NTP Classic. If you're not using that functionality to begin with, then it's hard to be affected by vulnerabilities in it. I say "depending on what it is" because of course you can have functionality that, even though you don't care about it, you still can't actually turn off (e.g. a protocol server that implements commands you don't care about, but can't disable). It's not clear to me offhand whether the NTP Classic functionality that NTPsec deleted is the type that doesn't affect you if you don't use it, or if it's the type that can't be disabled.