So with the new SMBv3 Remote Code Execution issues codenamed “SMBGhost”. SMBGhost is an issue where an attack could gain remote code execution by exploiting a bug in SMB compression. A temporary fix is disabling SMB compression on the server side using this registry key:

Set-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters" DisableCompression -Type DWORD -Value 1 -Force

Microsoft has since released a patch (see this link for more info). We’ve decided to start monitoring SMB sessions on clients in any case. Normally speaking, no SMB sessions to a client should be open unless you are performing a remote installation using the ADMIN$ share. So it’s good practice to check if there are SMB sessions open and if so, where they are coming from. This is also a pretty cool trick to find who is hosting their own shares inside of your networks.

The Script

So its a fairly short script – it alerts on both currently opened sessions, and active SMB connections. There’s a difference between the both as you can connect to the IPC$ share, without having an active open session. In any case – I’d run this script every minute or less on all your workstations. Its quite lightweight and a great help to find bad actors in your environment.

$Sessions = Get-smbsession
$Connections = get-smbconnection


if ($sessions) {
    foreach ($Session in $Sessions) {
        write-host "a session has been found coming from $($Session.ClientComputerName). The logged on user is $($Session.ClientUserName) with $($Session.NumOpens) opened sessions" 
    }
}
else {
    write-host "No sessions found"
}

if ($Connections) {
    foreach ($Connection in $Connections) {
        write-host "a Connection has been found on $($Connection.ServerName). The logged on user is $($Connection.Username) with $($Connection.NumOpens) opened sessions" 
    }
}
else {
    write-host "No sessions found"
}

And that’s it! as always, Happy PowerShelling. 🙂

• Author
• Recent Posts

Follow me

Kelvin Tegelaar

I am a Microsoft Certified System Engineer working as the CTO of the Managed Services Provider Lime Networks B.V. in the Netherlands. I mostly enjoy automating business processes by deploying PowerShell solutions, but just have a large passion for Microsoft Technology in general.

If you want to contact me directly you can find me on twitter here, or via email: Kelvin {at} limenetworks.nl

Follow me

Latest posts by Kelvin Tegelaar (see all)

• Monitoring with PowerShell: Monitoring client VPN settings - March 31, 2020
• Monitoring with PowerShell: monitor and enabling WOL for HP, Lenovo, Dell - March 26, 2020
• Monitoring with PowerShell: VSS Snapshot size - March 24, 2020