MITRE ATT&CKsub-technique

T1547.003 Time Providers

Published 2020-01-24 Modified 2025-10-24 Official page ↗
Domain
enterprise
Tactics
Persistence, Privilege Escalation
Platforms
Windows
Version
1.2
Created
2020-01-24

Description

Adversaries may abuse time providers to execute DLLs when the system boots. The Windows Time service (W32Time) enables time synchronization across and within domains. W32Time time providers are responsible for retrieving time stamps from hardware/network resources and outputting these values to other network clients. Time providers are implemented as dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) that are registered in the subkeys of `HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\`. The time provider manager, directed by the service control manager, loads and starts time providers listed and enabled under this key at system startup and/or whenever parameters are changed. Adversaries may abuse this architecture to establish persistence, specifically by creating a new arbitrarily named subkey pointing to a malicious DLL in the `DllName` value. Administrator privileges are required for time provider registration, though execution will run in context of the Local Service account.

Related

Subtechnique of · MITRE ATT&CK (1)

  • T1547 Boot or Logon Autostart Execution technique

Tactic · MITRE ATT&CK (2)

  • TA0003 Persistence tactic
  • TA0004 Privilege Escalation tactic

Referenced by MITRE ATT&CK · mitigates (2)

  • M1022 Restrict File and Directory Permissions mitigation
  • M1024 Restrict Registry Permissions mitigation

Referenced by Compliance · mitigates (10)

  • NIST-AC-17 Remote Access NIST 800-53 control
  • NIST-AC-3 Access Enforcement NIST 800-53 control
  • NIST-AC-4 Information Flow Enforcement NIST 800-53 control
  • NIST-AC-6 Least Privilege NIST 800-53 control
  • NIST-CA-7 Continuous Monitoring NIST 800-53 control
  • NIST-CM-2 Baseline Configuration NIST 800-53 control
  • NIST-CM-5 Access Restrictions for Change NIST 800-53 control
  • NIST-CM-6 Configuration Settings NIST 800-53 control
  • NIST-SI-4 System Monitoring NIST 800-53 control
  • NIST-SI-7 Software, Firmware, and Information Integrity NIST 800-53 control

References