Statime

Of all severe software security bugs, a big chunk (50-70%) has one single source: memory corruption. The underlying cause is that, traditionally, systems software is implemented in languages that are not memory-safe. The way forward is to replace these pieces of software with memory-safe alternatives, one by one. Doing so will not just mitigate, but eliminate this category of bugs entirely. This project picks out one piece: the Precision Time Protocol (PTP). High-precision clock synchronization plays a crucial role in networking, with application areas such as high precision localization, finance, broadcasting, security protocols, smart grids, and cellular base station transmissions. Our proof-of-concept implementation will conform to the IEEE standard for PTP and will focus on the software implementation of a slave-only PTP ordinary clock. In the future, our work is expected to become part of a wider open-source roadmap for reliable and memory-safe keeping of network time, that will seek to expand the feature set of our implementation and work towards growing its adoption.

Statime is part of Project Pendulum.