Java applets affecting system clock
843798Sep 10 2006 — edited Sep 15 2006In the past week or two, we've been having Windows computers at work failing kerberos security because the clocks are out of sync with the domain controllers. It took a while to track it down, but it is being caused by online Java games our users are playing during breaks. There are some at popcap.com, and a few at pogo.com that I can use to reliably reproduce the problem.
On fully patched Windows XP SP2 machines using fully patched IE 6 with the Sun JRE 1.5.0_08, the system clock sometimes gains as much as 30 seconds per minute, which throws the system clock far enough out in between syncs with the DCs to fail security. This is reproducable on any WinXP SP2 machine running JRE 1.5.0_08 that I've tested (about 8 so far, some domain members, some not).
The same problem doesn't present itself in Mozilla browsers. The question is, is this an IE problem or a Java problem? If this doesn't get resolved, I'll have to ban Java on our network for anything but network related activities.
Thanks.