MITRE ATT&CK technique

T1209

Time Providers

About this technique

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)

Read the full ATT&CK description

Time providers are implemented as dynamic-link libraries (DLLs) that are registered in the subkeys of <code>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\TimeProviders\</code>. (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 registering and enabling a malicious DLL as a time provider. Administrator privileges are required for time provider registration, though execution will run in context of the Local Service account. (Citation: Github W32Time Oct 2017)

TA0003
Curated mapping

Curated incident relationships

These associations come from maintained incident records. The recorded confidence is shown when the source record provides it.

0 items
No curated incident mappings yet.
Heuristic association

Daily items linked through predicted CVEs

A Daily item appears here when it mentions a CVE whose triage artifact predicts this technique. This is not a verified ATT&CK mapping.

0 items
No heuristic Daily associations yet.
Heuristic association

Predicted CVE associations

These backfilled or model-produced candidates come from the current triage artifact. They are informational, not official MITRE mappings.

0 items
No predicted associations yet for this technique.
T1209 · Time Providers · Baitaphish