Starting with January 2005, the BugBlog will pick its Bug of the Month, representing the most significant bug found in the past month. Sometimes, the bug will be the one that could potentially cause the most damage; sometimes it will be the bug that affects the most users. And sometimes, it will be the bug that is just the most interesting bug. This bug will be selected either from the free Bug of the Day or from the subscription-only BugBlog Plus.
The Bug of the Month for January 2005 was first posted as a special Bug of the Day on December 17:
Microsoft has released a critical update for Windows XP Service Pack 2. They have found that if you are using the Windows Firewall included in SP2 and you make a dial-up connection to the Internet, you may be inadvertantly allowing file and print sharing with the entire Internet. If you have Windows XP Service Pack 2 installed, you will need to get the KB886185 update from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/
Why this one? Well, it potentially hit a lot of users (people who have upgraded to Windows XP Service Pack 2 and still use dial-up). Leaving file and print sharing open to the entire Internet is certainly dangerous, although due to the nature of dial-up connections, it would not be easy to exploit. And the fact that Windows XP Service Pack 2, a service pack designed to tighten security, actually allowed this, is certainly worth a laugh at Microsoft's expense.
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Article comments
1 - Lono
Come on, you aren't really still using Microsoft Explorer are you? Get with the new century and download Mozilla's Firefox. It is WAY more secure, free, upgradable... and WAY more secure. I used to run Adaware for about 30 minutes a month with Explorer. It would find about 30 to 40 peices of spyware embedded.
Now that I have Firefox I run it and it executes in about 3 minutes and finds 1 to 2 pieces of spyware.
So get Mozilla, or if you are going to stay with Explorer... make dead sure you have Lavasoft's Adaware
2 - Bruce Kratofil
"Come on, you aren't really still using Microsoft Explorer are you? "
No, I'm not, as the many reviews of Mozilla and Firefox here at Blogcritics will attest. However, too many people still are using it.
3 - Eric Olsen
according to Site meter 82% of our readers use some form of Internet Explorer: information on Microsoft products will be of vital interest for some time to come - great idea Bruce, thanks!
4 - DrPat
Thanks for the reference to BugBlog - it is already bookmarked on my system!