To cope with clock drift the real-time clock has to be synchronised with an external clock. The most straight-forward method to support this within the protocol is to allow an absolute time to be set. However, this should only be allowed from the read-only trusted stage. An alternative method is to allow the clock to be corrected by introducing a limited amount of additional ticks or to stop the clock for a limited amount of ticks. By having limited correction, the clock can still be synchronised while an attacker cannot change the clock by more than a negligible factor each year.
To cope with clock drift the real-time clock has to be synchronised with an external clock. The most straight-forward method to support this within the protocol is to allow an absolute time to be set. However, this should only be allowed from the read-only trusted stage. An alternative method is to allow the clock to be corrected by introducing a limited amount of additional ticks or to stop the clock for a limited amount of ticks. By having limited correction, the clock can still be synchronised while an attacker cannot change the clock by more than a negligible factor each year.