CALROG.COM: Security Hole Found under Windows XP

Security Hole Found Under Windows XP
By C. Rogers, 01.02

With Windows XP only being two-months old, a strong and threatening vulnerability has already been found in its code base. As discovered in late December, a flaw in WinXP's UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) setup has the ability to allow hackers to access system hardware, and have full privileges to local files. One other possible side effect is a DoS (denial-of-service) attack, which would flood a local machine with multiple network-status requests.

In October 2001, Windows XP was reported by CALROG.COM and other news sources for having "raw sockets" open by default. What this means is nearly every Internet-based service is available for outside users to break into-- some examples of services are TCP/IP, UDP and FTP.

This comes as a crushing blow for Microsoft, whom touted Windows XP as the "most secure OS release ever". While out-of-the-box, no new operating system is prone from network-related bugs, the seriousness of this flaw can compromise the stability of a local machine. When this flaw was reported in December 2001, Microsoft released a fix almost immediately.

While this may "fix" the issue with system security, a large amount of Windows XP users never check for system updates. These users include casual PC goers whom do not have a vast amount of computer-based knowledge (which constitutes a substantial portion of the North American population).

This security bug also affects Windows 98SE and Millennium Edition users whom separately installed UPnP plug-ins on their system. While this issue may not ultimately be pegged on Windows XP alone, the mere fact that XP was been pre-shipped enabling UPnP and raw-sockets will affect millions od new PC-purchasers.

A patch for this security bug can be downloaded from Microsoft directly at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS01-059.asp .

<<Main Page

Security Hole Found Under Windows XP [01/02 Top Story]

DRAM Prices to Increase as Toshiba Leaves Market

Intel 845 Chipset Now Supports DDR-SDRAM

Linux Kernel Up to Version 2.4.17

CALROG.COM 2000-2002 Headlines.Copyright Info listed here. Thank you for visiting CALROG.COM, where we report the latest technology for the public throughout a monthly schedule.