Windows Service Information Gathering is a critical post-exploitation technique commonly offered by advanced Remote Access Trojans (RATs) and Command-and-Control (C2) frameworks through their Service Manager feature. After enumerating existing services, and provided the attacker has sufficient privileges, they can inspect a wide range of service properties. This includes:

• Service name / display name
• Service state (running, stopped, paused, start pending, stop pending, etc.)
• Service startup type (automatic, manual, disabled, delayed start)
• Service description
• Image path (path to the executable)
• Service arguments and command-line options
• Service dependencies (other services or system components it relies on)
• Service security descriptor (access control lists, ACLs, defining who can manage the service)
• Account context (the user account under which the service is running, e.g., LocalSystem, NetworkService, custom accounts)
• Service binary permissions (filesystem permissions on the executable and related files)
• Loaded drivers and kernel mode services (especially for services tagged as SERVICE_KERNEL_DRIVER)

Gathering this information can expose crucial details about a target system, such as:

• Misconfigurations in ACLs or weak file permissions: This could allow an attacker to hijack a service binary, leading to privilege escalation by executing malicious payloads as SYSTEM.
• Detection of installed software: Service names and descriptions often reveal the presence of third-party software, including security software like antivirus.
• Unquoted Service Path Vulnerability: If the service's executable path contains spaces and is not enclosed in quotation marks, an attacker could place a malicious executable in a higher-priority path segment, resulting in execution with elevated privileges (e.g., placing a Program.exe in C:\Program Files\ to hijack a service expecting to launch C:\Program Files\Vulnerable Service\service.exe)
• Sandbox and virtualization artifacts: Certain services may indicate that the system is a virtual machine or part of an analysis sandbox, useful for malware to detect and evade controlled environments.
• Persistence opportunities: Services with misconfigurations can be leveraged to maintain persistence on the target system through service creation, modification, or binary replacement.