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How an HTTP header caused time.gov to skew from UTC

A technical investigation revealed that time.gov, the official U.S. time reference website operated by NIST, was displaying inconsistent time offsets due to an HTTP header implementation issue. The problem stemmed from how the website calculated network latency, specifically related to the 'Date' header in HTTP responses. NIST has since fixed the issue, though it only affected the website's display and not NIST's core time services like NTP.

Background

NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) maintains the official U.S. time reference and operates time.gov as a web-based time service alongside its more precise NTP services.

Source
Lobsters
Published
May 6, 2026 at 09:55 PM
Score
7.0 / 10