I have noticed that sometimes block timestamps appear out of order. For example:


>> 142884 2011-08-28 05:23:00   1   50                   1805728.389   7144249.91789992   265.327   966.464   36.101%
>> 142883 2011-08-28 05:23:14   27   896.27036728   1805728.389   7144199.91789992   265.329   966.464   36.1009%

Block 142884 bears a timestamp which is 14 seconds earlier than the prior block.

I asked this question on #bitcoin-dev and got: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_timestamp, which makes sense.

My question is: how can the network afford for the timestamp to be up to 2 hrs advanced? Does this open the door to any kind of time based attack on the network?

Please add this to the appropriate thread or sub-forum. My posts are bound and limited to this forum, for now.