How come when I duckduckgo “what time is it”, that sometimes my actual time shows up instead of a random time? With boot clock randomization and sdwdate saying successful, shouldn’t it always be a random time?
Sometimes when I start a whonix-ws vm it will be a random time, but other instances it will be my actual timezone.
How come when I duckduckgo “what time is it”, that sometimes my actual time shows up instead of a random time?
the last hop is probably on the same timezone as you, see circuit path on Tor Browser.
Checking the time is not a reliable option because many people can be on the same timezone, but few people can be on the same ip. Check your IP on https://check.torproject.org/api/ip
With boot clock randomization and sdwdate saying successful, shouldn’t it always be a random time?
Boot clock randomization is only for the boot, to change between and and 180 seconds Boot Clock Randomization - Kicksecure . It is run during boot, before sdwdate starts.
With boot clock randomization and sdwdate saying successful, shouldn’t it always be a random time?
In sdwdate clock randomization was enabled by default for many versions. From sdwdate version 11.8 and above it needs to be opt-in, which is only done inside Kicksecure ™ through package anon-apps-config/etc/sdwdate.d/40_anon-apps-config.confRANDOMIZE_TIME=true. sdwdate version 11.8 does not enable clock randomization by default for non-Kicksecure ™ users.
Sdwdate is used to set the system clock, the randomization is used to ask the pools available via onion services and the median time of the results is used, as far as I understood from the docs.
At random intervals, sdwdate connects to a variety of webservers and extracts the time stamps from http headers (see: RFC 2616).
## Add or subtract a random amount of nanoseconds (up to 1 second) when setting
## the time.
## Whonix enables this by default in package anon-apps-config.
#RANDOMIZE_TIME=true
I’m using qubes-whonix, but that conf file doesn’t exist for me. Is it still opt-in or is it enabled by default?
I guess I’m a little confused on why if sdwdate makes the time from the median of three onion services, that when I google what time it is, how could it be my real time?
Is it not reading my system clock and instead just checking timezone from the ip address?
Because the actual time displayed on my computer doesn’t change after sdwdate runs. Am I supposed to set clockVM to sys-whonix instead of sys-net?
I guess I’m a little confused on why if sdwdate makes the time from the median of three onion services, that when I google what time it is, how could it be my real time?
Thanks for all this info, I was checking the conf file in dom0.
in /etc/sdwdate.d/30_default.conf in a whonix-ws vm, RANDOMIZE_TIME=true is commented out.
But in etc/sdwdate.d/40_anon-apps-config.conf it is active.
Is that an issue?
My expected result when searching “what time is it” in a whonix-ws vm is that the random time sdwdate sets is what would show up (the median of 3 random onions), instead it is occasionally my actual time.
Also, when I run date in my whonix-ws vm terminal, it is a different time than when I search “what time is it” in my browser.
Is this because searching in the browser just gives the time zone of the last hop? Whereas date gives me the time sdwdate has set in my system clock?