Hide Windows NT from Network Neighborhood Browsing


Don’t want a windows nt server or your windows nt workstation to show up in
Network Neighborhood? The server parm refers to the
server service which both windows nt server and windows nt workstation have to
support resource sharing. From a security perspective, disabling the server
service in windows nt workstation will make the workstation invisible to
standard hacker tools and tricks. Some administrators use this technique to hide
a server until they are ready to make it available for their users.

The windows nt registry hack :

Hive: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Key: SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\LanmanServer\Parameters
Name:
Hidden
Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1


The command line method is

net config server /hidden:yes

This seems easier. Don’t do it (except perhaps on workstations). There is a
real gotcha! down the road. Unfortunately, and don’t ask me why Microsoft would
do this, this disables NT’s ability to automatically tune the Server service at
boot. See Q128167:
Server Service Configuration and Tuning
.

FYI but also not recommended: The net config server
command has two other parameters. Issue the command

net config server help

will return:

The syntax of this command is:

NET CONFIG SERVER [/AUTODISCONNECT:time]
[/SRVCOMMENT:”text”]
[/HIDDEN:{YES | NO}]

In Network Neighborhood, there is a comment column beside
the machine name. SRVCOMMENT lets you enter a comment
for display in Network Neighborhood. Be careful here. This is potentially a gold
mine for hackers if you give too much information away. And don’t forget about
the tuning issue.

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