Windows Secure Time Seeding Issue

By rbosaz , 25 August, 2023

Listening to Security Now(link is external) brought this Windows flaw to my attention. There appears to be a heuristics flaw in the secure time seeding(link is external) 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(link is external), or read the notes from the pod here(link is external). Also Ars Technica(link is external) 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.

 

Comments