NIPC Warns of Security Holes in Windows XP
ZDnet reports that The National Infrastructure Protection Center issued an unusual warning to consumers about two security holes in the Windows XP operating system. The NIPC is an agency that brings together state and federal government resources with those of the private sector to protect the nation's electronic infrastructure.
According to the NIPC advisory, the problem stems from the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) feature that is installed and running by default in Windows XP, and may be active on Windows ME, Windows 98, and 98 Second Edition.
Regardless of your opinion about Microsoft, you have to support any government effort to expose security holes in esoteric operating system-level services when they impact consumers. Microsoft needs to deal with this issue in public, and take aggressive action to prevent unwitting consumers from having their computers harnessed in distributed denial of service attacks.