Canonical has introduced that it’ll start utilizing a chunk of software program known as chrony for safer time administration, beginning with Ubuntu 25.10. Finish customers don’t want to fret about this variation an excessive amount of, however it’s going to lead to strengthened system safety, particularly for cryptographic operations and certificates validation.

As soon as applied, Ubuntu will use chrony as a substitute of systemd-timesyncd. The difficulty with systemd-timesyncd is that it makes use of the Community Time Protocol (NTP), as a substitute of the improved Community Time Safety (NTS). Whereas NTP is sweet at maintaining time, it doesn’t authenticate the time supply; this might result in your system getting the mistaken time from a malicious server, which may mess with safety checks when visiting a safe web site.

Getting a little bit bit technical, NTP makes use of port 123/UDP to ship and obtain information. UDP (Person Datagram Protocol) is able to sending information shortly nevertheless it doesn’t assure supply or order. If information is misplaced, it doesn’t matter since updates are frequent.

With NTS, earlier than the time is fetched, your pc begins by performing a safe handshake with the NTS server, much like how web sites utilizing HTTPS set up a safe connection. NTS does this handshake over a special port, 4460/TCP. TCP, or Transmission Management Protocol, is extra dependable for sending information because it ensures all information arrives within the right order.

As soon as the connection is established, then the time synchronization occurs over the NTP port, however every time, it’s cryptographically signed which means the time data is genuine and hasn’t been altered.

The change to chrony will happen on June 5, in line with the present schedule. So, when you determine to attempt the day by day picture of Ubuntu 25.10 after this date, try to be operating Ubuntu with chrony fetching the time securely.

Supply: Ubuntu Mailing Record