Time Providers (T1547.003)

Tactic: Persistence, Privilege Escalation

Tactics
Persistence , Privilege Escalation
Platforms
Windows
Reference
attack.mitre.org/techniques/T1547.003

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.(Citation: Microsoft W32Time Feb 2018) W32Time time providers are responsible for retrieving time stamps from hardware/network resources and outputting these values to other network clients.(Citation: Microsoft TimeProvider)

Time providers are implemented as dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) that are registered in the subkeys of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\.(Citation: Microsoft TimeProvider) 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.(Citation: Microsoft TimeProvider)

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.(Citation: Github W32Time Oct 2017)

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