Windows Services For Red Teamers
 

Learn how to enumerate and exploit misconfigured windows services
What you'll learn
Understanding Windows Service architecture and how the Service Control Manager (SCM) works
Developing custom Windows Services for persistence and post-exploitation scenarios
Implementing Service Control Dispatchers, Service Control Handlers, and Service Main functions
Discovering and exploiting Unquoted Service Path vulnerabilities manually and with Rust + WinAPI
Requirements
Basics of programming
Description
This course dives into Windows Service internals and demonstrates how attackers abuse misconfigurations for persistence and privilege escalation. You'll start with the fundamentals of Windows Services, understand how the Service Control Manager works, and then build a malicious service from scratch. The course covers implementing the Service Control Dispatcher, writing Service Control Handlers, creating the Service Main function, and launching custom services in a real-world offensive security context.
You'll also explore one of the most common Windows privilege escalation vectors - Unquoted Service Paths. The curriculum demonstrates both manual abuse techniques and automated discovery using the Windows API with Rust. Finally, the module concludes with insecure service permissions, showing how weak configurations can be leveraged to gain elevated access on target systems.
In addition to the offensive concepts, the module also helps students understand how defenders detect suspicious service activity, identify insecure configurations during assessments, and analyze service-related persistence mechanisms commonly abused by malware and red team operators. Practical demonstrations and hands-on coding exercises ensure learners gain real-world experience interacting with Windows internals and service management APIs in modern environments. The lessons are designed to balance theory with implementation, making complex Windows Service concepts easier to understand and apply effectively . This helps penetration testers and red teamers.
Who this course is for
Penetration Testers
Red Teamers
Malware Developers