Potential Persistence via Time Provider Modification

Last updated 4 months ago on 2025-03-20

Created 5 years ago on 2021-01-19

About

Identifies modification of the Time Provider. Adversaries may establish persistence by registering and enabling a malicious DLL as a time provider. Windows uses the time provider architecture to obtain accurate time stamps from other network devices or clients in the network. Time providers are implemented in the form of a DLL file which resides in the System32 folder. The service W32Time initiates during the startup of Windows and loads w32time.dll.

Tags

Domain: EndpointOS: WindowsUse Case: Threat DetectionTactic: PersistenceTactic: Privilege EscalationData Source: Elastic EndgameData Source: Elastic DefendData Source: SysmonData Source: Microsoft Defender for EndpointData Source: SentinelOneLanguage: eql

Severity

medium

Risk Score

MITRE ATT&CK™

Persistence (TA0003)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Boot or Logon Autostart Execution (T1547)(opens in a new tab or window)

Privilege Escalation (TA0004)(opens in a new tab or window)

↳ Boot or Logon Autostart Execution (T1547)(opens in a new tab or window)

License

Elastic License v2(opens in a new tab or window)

Definition

Rule Type

Event Correlation Rule

Integration Pack

Prebuilt Security Detection Rules

Index Patterns

logs-endpoint.events.registry-*endgame-*logs-windows.sysmon_operational-*winlogbeat-*logs-m365_defender.event-*logs-sentinel_one_cloud_funnel.*

Related Integrations

endpoint(opens in a new tab or window)

windows(opens in a new tab or window)

m365_defender(opens in a new tab or window)

sentinel_one_cloud_funnel(opens in a new tab or window)

Query

registry where host.os.type == "windows" and event.type == "change" and
  registry.path: (
    "HKLM\\SYSTEM\\*ControlSet*\\Services\\W32Time\\TimeProviders\\*",
    "\\REGISTRY\\MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\*ControlSet*\\Services\\W32Time\\TimeProviders\\*",
    "MACHINE\\SYSTEM\\*ControlSet*\\Services\\W32Time\\TimeProviders\\*"
  ) and
  registry.data.strings:"*.dll" and
  not
  (
    process.executable : "?:\\Windows\\System32\\msiexec.exe" and
    registry.data.strings : "?:\\Program Files\\VMware\\VMware Tools\\vmwTimeProvider\\vmwTimeProvider.dll"
  ) and
  not registry.data.strings : "C:\\Windows\\SYSTEM32\\w32time.DLL"

Install detection rules in Elastic Security

Detect Potential Persistence via Time Provider Modification in the Elastic Security detection engine by installing this rule into your Elastic Stack.

To setup this rule, check out the installation guide for Prebuilt Security Detection Rules(opens in a new tab or window).