When Service Pack 2 was released for Windows XP Home and Professional, it was promoted as being an essential upgrade to secure Windows from virus and worm attacks. However, I don’t think that has been the case. The Windows Security Center and its default options of having Windows Firewall on was to help protect vulnerable installations of the operating system. Since the release of SP2, I personally haven’t seen any less vulnerability announcements, but I’m not sure if I’ve seen an increase in attacks towards Windows, maybe its because of Microsoft’s annoucements of it being more secure, it has given attackers more of an incentive to disprove Mr. Gates. In any case the point of this was to show that despite the security hoopla of Windows XP SP2 being secure Microsoft has just released another set of patches to make their OS “more” secure. Below is a list of patches that claims to secure the OS and its applications. Maybe Microsoft should do a lot more regression and QA testing before releasing products out to the public. I heard this saying somewhere before, treat your computer like a car, it needs regular maintenence, without it, it will one day cease to function the way it supposed to. With that in mind, Microsoft should follow that, test, test, test, troubleshoot and more troubleshoot, an untested car can kill someone, an unsecure OS can take your livelihood away.
Edited: Feb 17, 2005
Decided to remove the whole message of the security bulletin. If you want to read about the MS Security Bulletin please go here
