Exactly, that is indeed a huge security hole. There are millions PCs on the
internet with file sharing wide open and guest access allowed.

You don't even need to hack anything to get in.

That's why I have file sharing completely shut down on my laptop so I could
use it in unsecured locations.

In fact, I've no open ports on it at all. And no, I'm not a security freak;
I'm simply aware of the consequences.

If I managed to get you scared, go ahead and check if your PC is secure,
say, here: http://tools-on.net/

Yes, that was a design fault, not just Microsoft's, though. There's
notorious <3 letter company name self censored>'s RPC, sendmail and many,
many others.

It all was designed in pre internet era, that's why everybody was so
careless by today's standard.

Things sure changed and it's hard to get back to secure mode as we're used
to "it just works".

Your network sharing just works. Your administrator connects to these
"unnecessary administrative shares" and it just works.

And so it goes. It has to stop and it sure won't be easy.

Think about your reaction to this obscure AS feature. AS is used by
relatively few and very few even know there was some network sync.

Now imagine what would happen if next version of Windows will have file
sharing off by default. Oh, dear...

Anyway, we're trying to get genie back into the bottle. For example, XP
won't bind file sharing to modem connections by default.

XP's firewall knows about file sharing and would only expose it to subnet.

Best regards,

Ilya

This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

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