“Security experts and vendors this week welcomed the introduction of Windows Firewall, part of Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2), as a valuable way of protecting PCs. But while the firewall is an improvement, it falls short of the standard of protection expected of commercial firewalls, according to some industry observers,” Matthew Broersma writes for Techworld.com.
“Windows Firewall–which replaces the old Internet Connection Firewall–marks the first time all up-to-date PCs will have a firewall switched on by default, an important step in stopping the spread of viruses, according to industry analysts. However, the software suffers from two major flaws, critics say: it does not block outbound traffic, and it can be switched off by another application, possibly even by a clever worm,” Broersma writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: An insecure veriosn of Microsoft Windows? Say it isn’t so! For our Windows-only friends, information about smoothly adding a Mac OS X machine to your computing arsenal can be found here.
mike
You knew it, I knew it, every tech publication knew it. But until Microsoft admitted it and started to do something about it, nothing changed. Microsoft sat back on their arses for too long, yes, but now they are repairing the damage their former arrongance over security has caused. We can all sit and say “Too late”, but as long as the number of mass-mailer worm emails in my Inbox goes down and web sites that I want to get to don’t go offline thanks to a DOS attack, I don’t care.
Spender,
How the hell would an average Windows user know how a firewall works? They have never had one activated before and, from what I’ve heard, with SP2, they still haven’t.
Remember, a huge number of windoze users aren’t using XP in the first place, so this patch will do nothing for them. Many XP users haven’t downloaded the new patch for a patch…yet, and may not ever do it. How many are still running completely unpatched versions of XP that are a couple years old?
“You are either clueless or a liar. – George”
Perhaps George should look over this information.
I have Spyware and Adware being loaded by non-admin users on Windows 2000, so it does happen.
problem with windows is that the non-admin users are inconvenient.
When you install the admin user should be integrated well enough so that it is just a password thing. Although, at work, I don’t trust being a limited user and installing software… so I login as admin. Of course, I also am behind a real firewall and can recognize virii.
OS X is designed better when running as a non-admin, imho.