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PipeList v1.02

  • Article

Published: July 4, 2016

Download Download PipeList (496 KB)

Introduction

Did you know that the device driver that implements named pipes is actually a file system driver? In fact, the driver's name is NPFS.SYS, for "Named Pipe File System". What you might also find surprising is that its possible to obtain a directory listing of the named pipes defined on a system. This fact is not documented, nor is it possible to do this using the Win32 API. Directly using NtQueryDirectoryFile, the native function that the Win32 FindFile APIs rely on, makes it possible to list the pipes. The directory listing NPFS returns also indicates the maximum number of pipe instances set for each pipe and the number of active instances.

Download Download PipeList (496 KB)

Runs on:

  • Client: Windows Vista and higher
  • Server: Windows Server 2008 and higher
  • Nano Server: 2016 and higher