Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI)

Security Representation Within WMI

A discussion of WMI security would hardly be complete without at least a mention of how security is represented within WMI itself. One of the most striking things about security representation within WMI is that it is quite unlike everything else that we have encountered so far! To be sure, there are WMI objects to represent various facets of Windows 2000 security, such as SIDs (Security IDs), Access Control Lists, and trustees, but these objects are often impossible to retrieve directly from the Repository. They can be beyond the reach of any amount of creative WQL wizardry. The only way to retrieve a security object from WMI is often through methods of the objects whose security they represent. The remainder ...