Windows Secure Time Seeding Issue

By rbosaz , 25 August, 2023

Listening to Security Now brought this Windows flaw to my attention. There appears to be a heuristics flaw in the secure time seeding function in Windows. This flaw may reset the computers clock to hours, days, months or years. This has the the potential of a HUGE support headache never mind a potential security flaw.

To learn more about this you can listen to the pod cast here, or read the notes from the pod here. Also Ars Technica has a good article.

To avoid the issue it is recommended to disable the function by editing a registry key. Editing Window's registry keys should only be done if one understands the ramifications in doing so. Always perform back-ups.

Using regedit, edit as follows:

Path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\W32Time\Config

Set REG_DWORD UtilizeSslTimeData to 0 to disable. All my Windows 10 machines had it enabled.

 

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