# Configure Time Synchronization

Necessity: Accurate time synchronization is critical for security and operational integrity. It is essential for log correlation during forensic analysis, ensuring that events from multiple systems can be accurately sequenced. Many authentication protocols, such as Kerberos, depend on synchronized time to prevent replay attacks. Furthermore, cryptographic functions, including TLS/SSL certificate validation, rely on correct system time to verify certificate validity periods. Misconfigured time can lead to service denials, authentication failures, and an inability to investigate security incidents effectively.

Auditing and Remediation: The audit script verifies the current operational state of the system's time synchronization client, 'systemd-timesyncd'. It specifically checks if the service is active, indicating that the system is configured to synchronize its clock with a network time source. The remediation script directly manipulates the 'systemd-timesyncd' service. It can enable and start the service to enforce time synchronization ('active') or disable and stop it ('inactive') based on the provided argument.

Recommended State Rationale:
- Basic: ['active']. Enabling time synchronization is a fundamental requirement for any networked system. This ensures a baseline of reliability for logging and security protocols.
- Moderate: ['active']. There is no effective intermediate state; time synchronization should be considered a binary setting (either on or off). Maintaining it as 'active' is a universal best practice.
- Strict: ['active']. In a strictly hardened environment, not only must time synchronization be active, but it should also be configured to use specific, trusted, and preferably internal NTP servers. While the service state remains 'active', a strict policy implies a more rigorous configuration of the time sources themselves to prevent attacks involving malicious time servers.

## Recommended State Configuration

| Security Level | Value |
|----------------|-------|
| **Basic** | `['active']` |
| **Moderate** | `['active']` |
| **Strict** | `['active']` |
| **Type** | `ENUM` |

## Audit Script Working

Bash script that checks the status of the NTP service using the 'timedatectl' command. The script must parse the output and return only the status value, which will be either 'active' or 'inactive'.

## Remediation Script Working

Bash script that accepts a single positional argument ('active' or 'inactive'). If the argument is 'active', the script must enable and start the 'systemd-timesyncd' service. If 'inactive', it must disable and stop the service. The script must return 'true' upon successful execution or 'false' if it fails.

