Disable NetBIOS in CLI with WMIC

NetBIOS is a very old protocol wich is no more interesting today except in some particular cases. But it has a large number of security flaws.

We can use WMIC (Microsoft Windows Management Instrumentation Command-line) to disable it.

Before disabling it we will see wich network interfaces are using it:

• With cmd.exe:

bat wmic nicconfig get caption,index,TcpipNetbiosOptions

• With PowerShell:

wmic nicconfig get "caption,index,TcpipNetbiosOptions"

Then you will need administrator power to run the following commands:

• If you want to disable NetBIOS for one network interface only, identify it index number and run:

wmic nicconfig where index=5 call SetTcpipNetbios 2

• If you want to disable NetBIOS for all network interfaces run:

wmic nicconfig where TcpipNetbiosOptions=0 call SetTcpipNetbios 2
wmic nicconfig where TcpipNetbiosOptions=1 call SetTcpipNetbios 2

SetTcpipNetbios can take this values:

• 0 – Use NetBIOS parameters from DHCP server
• 1 – Enable NetBIOS via TCP/IP
• 2 - Disable NetBIOS via TCP/IP