T1547.003sub-technique of T1547 Boot or Logon Autostart Execution

Time Providers

Windowsnothing on this site yetT1547.003 on attack.mitre.org

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.
MITRE ATT&CK 19.2, retrieved 2026-09-12

If this is happening now

Checklists and playbooks to open while the alert is still live.

Playbook for this stage

Suspicious execution on an endpoint

An EDR alert, an unexplained process, or a user reporting something odd.

Playbook for this stage

Cloud account compromise

Impossible travel, an unrecognised inbox rule, or a reported invoice-fraud attempt.

how MITRE says to see it

Detect Abuse of Windows Time Providers for Persistence

Behavioral correlation of privileged registry key creation under the W32Time TimeProviders path combined with a new DLL written to disk and potential process activity by LocalService. Indicates abuse of Time Providers for persistence.

what reduces it

M1022 Restrict File and Directory Permissions. Consider using Group Policy to configure and block additions/modifications to W32Time DLLs.
M1024 Restrict Registry Permissions. Consider using Group Policy to configure and block modifications to W32Time parameters in the Registry.

the rest of T1547

T1547.001 Registry Run Keys / Startup Folder · 8 on this site
T1547.002 Authentication Package · not covered yet
T1547.004 Winlogon Helper DLL · not covered yet
T1547.005 Security Support Provider · not covered yet
T1547.006 Kernel Modules and Extensions · not covered yet
T1547.007 Re-opened Applications · not covered yet
T1547.008 LSASS Driver · not covered yet
T1547.009 Shortcut Modification · not covered yet
T1547.010 Port Monitors · not covered yet
T1547.012 Print Processors · not covered yet
T1547.013 XDG Autostart Entries · not covered yet
T1547.014 Active Setup · not covered yet
T1547.015 Login Items · not covered yet

The description, detection analytics and mitigations are reproduced from MITRE ATT&CK, version 19.2, under its terms of use. The checklists, hunts, labs and everything else linked here are this site’s.