Timestamp validation failing
This page covers what “timestamp validation failing” usually means and how to recover.
Symptoms
Section titled “Symptoms”- Sporadic signature rejections even though the HMAC is correct.
- Errors cluster around the 5-minute replay protection window.
What usually causes it
Section titled “What usually causes it”- Receiver’s clock drifted from UTC.
- Receiver is using local time instead of UTC for the timestamp comparison.
How to fix
Section titled “How to fix”- Run NTP on the receiver (or equivalent managed time sync).
- Always compare against UTC. Unix timestamps are seconds since the epoch, timezone-agnostic.
- Widen the window to 10 minutes if you operate across unreliable networks.