Due to the overflow of the 10-bit counter, some devices will “go back in time” by 1024 weeks (almost 20 years). This will occur on the night of September 17-18. The problem will affect – and this is now a sure thing – Microsemi’s (AKA Symmetricom) SyncServer (100, 200 and 300 series), TimeProvider 1000, parts of TimeProvider 5000 and Timesource TS3x00 (and a few others), which are popular in industrial networks. Loss of historical data and event logs, logging and security problems, loss of process visualization – these are some of the surprises that can happen when, having received the wrong date, other devices also decide to “time travel.” What to do? If your network is running one of the aforementioned devices, it’s best to disconnect it in advance. Unfortunately, most of them are no longer supported by the manufacturer and no patches are expected. So it looks like they will become quite useless after September 17. This leaves very little time, therefore, to replace them with new solutions. If you are not sure whether the problem also affects your device, you can unplug it on September seventeenth, and if it shows the correct date the next day, plug it in again. Of course, such a maneuver is possible only in those networks that can operate without time synchronization according to GPS for several/some hours.
Story Published at: September 3, 2022 at 10:28AM
Story Published at: September 3, 2022 at 10:28AM