The Security Mentor

Microsoft has a critically important update which wasn't part of the monthly update package last Tuesday.

Microsoft released the update to fix a problem with XP's firewall settings. When the firewall starts up, it's set to reject all incoming traffic (safe) except for file and print sharing requests from your local network (functional).

The problem is that the firewall would sometimes make a mistake about the size of your local network. Sometimes it decides that the entire Internet is your local network and it lets your files get shared by the world.

See Microsoft's description of the firewall security issue and pointer to the patch.