Catégorie : Server 2016

Hello,

I was in a situation where Windows Defender was not the antivirus configured on the Windows Server 2019 boxes and the vulnerability scanner trigger that the servers has 2 vulnerabilities related to Windows Defender. The issue is that if you dont use Microsoft Windows Defender, you can’t patch it. Since Microsoft Windows Defender is not started the vulneralibility is not exploitable. But since we wanted to provide a clean vulnerability report and if in the future the client decide to use Windows Defender it will be patched, so i needed to find a solution. Here’s what i did to be able to patch it (scriptable).

GPO :

Computer Configuration > Administrative Templates > Windows Components > Windows Defender Antivirus

Turn off Windows Defender Antivirus = Disable

Add to this GPO scope the servers that i wanted to patch (remove Authenticated Users from the « apply GPO » rights

Run gpupdate /force on the destinations servers

Copy and run the latest version of : mpam-fe Microsoft Defender Antivirus for Windows 10 and Windows 8.1(https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/wdsi/defenderupdates)

You should have new entries in the EventViewer under the section Microsoft-Windows-Windows Defender/Operational logs

If you verify Task Manager you will see that MsMPEng.exe is running

Copy and run updateplatform_e2a95a1a729b3e06ee156591826d0adb52502e5d (https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=KB4052623) Latest Defender Antivirus Definition (~15 MB)

You should have new entries in the EventViewer under the section Microsoft-Windows-Windows Defender/Operational logs

You can know remove the servers from the GPO scope and run gpupdate /force on the destinations servers

No reboot needed

Hope that was useful

Hello,

Today’s subject, SMB Signing, since many of us are asked to be CIS, NIST, anything Compliance to standards, since most of us worked hard to removed SMB1 from the environnement, now SMB Signing.

The best document and where everyone is referring to is https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/josebda/2010/12/01/the-basics-of-smb-signing-covering-both-smb1-and-smb2/

It’s kind of clear, on the first read, but you need to reread it many times and do your own testing with it. Here’re the conclusions of my tests :

Digitally sign communications (if server agrees) – Only apply to SMB1

Digitally sign communications (if client agrees) – Only apply to SMB1

So now you say.. SMB2 and SMB3 have it embedded…  and the answer is NO!

The only way to use SMB Signed is to enable Digitally sign communications (always), so now the question is, if I have a system that are incompatible with Signed SMB ? You can’t have both..

The workaround would be to use SMB Encryption instead, but now your Compliance team would not be happy because you don’t have Digitally sign communications (always) enable on every server, i’ll let you deal with this part. SMB Encryption is much secure than signing.

PLUS : SMB Encryption has a low footprint on the performance on Windows Server 2016 and UP. On 2008 R2 and 2012 R2, SMB Signing has a lower footprint on performance.

Demo Part :

Windows 2016 Default Config -> Windows 2016 Default Config

Get-SmbConnection | Select *

SmbInstance : Default
ContinuouslyAvailable : False
Credential : Confidential
Dialect : 3.1.1
Encrypted : False
NumOpens : 4
Redirected : False
ServerName : Confidential
ShareName : Confidential
Signed : False
UserName : Confidential
PSComputerName :
CimClass : ROOT/Microsoft/Windows/SMB : MSFT_SmbConnection
CimInstanceProperties : {ContinuouslyAvailable, Credential, Dialect, Encrypted…}
CimSystemProperties : Microsoft.Management.Infrastructure.CimSystemProperties

Part 2 :

Windows 2016 Digitally sign communications (always) -> Windows 2016 Default Config

Windows 2016 Default Config -> Windows 2016 Digitally sign communications (always)

Windows 2016 Digitally sign communications (always) -> Windows 2016 Digitally sign communications (always)

Get-SmbConnection | Select *

SmbInstance : Default
ContinuouslyAvailable : False
Credential : Confidential
Dialect : 3.1.1
Encrypted : False
NumOpens : 4
Redirected : False
ServerName : Confidential
ShareName : Confidential
Signed : True
UserName : Confidential
PSComputerName :
CimClass : ROOT/Microsoft/Windows/SMB : MSFT_SmbConnection
CimInstanceProperties : {ContinuouslyAvailable, Credential, Dialect, Encrypted…}
CimSystemProperties : Microsoft.Management.Infrastructure.CimSystemProperties

Part 3

To encrypt, you have 2 options, one really nice, per Share, on GUI you can use Server Manager (no you don’t have it in Computer Management), by powershell

Set-SmbShare –Name shareName -EncryptData $true

or

Set-SmbServerConfiguration –EncryptData $true 

To enable SMB encryption for every SmbServer connections

Beware! SMB Signing and SMB Encryption comes with increase in CPU Usage, be sure to monitor your CPU before and after to see if you are still OK.