Validation and verification of IEEE 1588 Annex K

Abstract

The Precision Time Protocol (PTP) specified by IEEE 1588 contains a security extension to properly protect the exchanged information. The purpose of this extension is to detect manipulation and illegitimate replay of PTP messages and consequently prevent malicious attacks. To gain confidence in certain implementations this article presents a basic test suite to validate and verify the IEEE 1588 security extension. Based on an analysis of the security functionality a test setup and basic test cases are presented that allow to test Targets Of Evaluation (TOE) - ordinary as well as transparent clocks - and being able to give evidence about the correct security functionality. Outcome is a set of 13 test cases that cover all aspects of PTP security, namely message protection, mutual authentication and management of security associations.