Windows management instrumentation disabled

Windows Management Instrumentation service. Service name: Winmgmt Display name: Windows Management Instrumentation Description: Provides a common interface and object model to access management information about operating system, devices, applications and services.

If this service is stopped, most Windows- based software will not function properly. If this service is disabled, any services that explicitly depend on it will fail to start. Type services. Please perform the following steps:. Please go to Pearl button Start and click on the Search programs and files For more information about the change from Start to Pearl button click here. If you perform an agentless scan of a Windows computer and the WMI service is disabled on the computer, Lansweeper will be unable to scan the machine and you'll see an error similar to the one below in the web console.

Errors will also be shown in the testconnection tool that is included in your Lansweeper installation folder and that can be used to test connections to Windows computers. Lansweeper can scan Linux, Unix, Mac and Windows computers, VMware servers and other network devices like printers, switches etc.

Keep in mind that you can scan Windows computers locally with the LsAgent or LsPush scanning agent as well. LsAgent is a feature introduced in Lansweeper 7. If you are using an older Lansweeper release, you will need to.

The initial. There are two main ways you can scan a Windows domain or workgroup computer: with a scanning agent or without. Errors found while scanning: WMI service is disabled on this machine. Techniques like this can be used as part of a User Entity Behavior Analytics UEBA system to automatically monitor what is happening across your whole system, and check for insider threats indicated by suspicious behavior or anomalous events. It can also launch processes and run commands on Windows boxes, either locally or remotely.

Neat, right? Obviously, at a practical level, wmic is an incredible aide for sysadmins. And before you start shouting into the browser, I know there are also equivalent PowerShell cmdlets , but I find the wmic syntax easier to remember. Thankfully, Impacket does just that. Wmiexec offers a workable pseudo-shell experience, where for each command entered on the client-side, it directly launches a separate shell on the target machine to run the command. Both psexec and smbexec use — see my previous post — Windows Services to launch commands on the remote system.

Smbexec is a little stealthier since it quickly creates and then deletes a service, whereas psexec leaves the telltale service around. Keep in mind that WMI is generally not the first place defenders investigate as a possible source for threats, whereas Services is usually a good starting point for looking for evidence of an attack. Well played, wmiexec! While I thought I was being clever in my own WMI experiments, it turns out the pen tester community has been there and done that!

You query this underlying Windows object to find users who are currently logged on. Got that? The next question is how to code the script block. The mythical insider in my scenario is interested in a specific user, Cruella. You can gaze upon the complete solution below:. Keep in mind that our insider is laying low.

You can make your lateral move when you get the notification from Register-WmiEvent. How does the script then return this interesting news that Cruella has logged on to the targeted machine?

Those of you who spotted the use of Netcat commands above get extra credit. Netcat is a well-known and versatile communications tool — not necessarily considered malware — that pops reverse shells , or can simply send a message across the network. I went with the latter option. Mission accomplished. In this scenario, I wanted to remotely launch using wmiexec a payload that would alert when a particular user, Cruella, logs into the system.

And then I could dump and crack her credentials. Anyway, this would be the stealthiest way to pull this off —both remote and fileless. The only problem, I thought at first, was the temporary nature of the WMI event.