Another day, another flaw

Microsoft has discovered a new Windows flaw, this time in one of NetBIOS over TCP/IP's (NetBT) services, namely the NetBIOS Name Server.

Microsoft has discovered a new Windows flaw, this time in one of NetBIOS over TCP/IP's (NetBT) services, namely the NetBIOS Name Server. The flaw effects pretty much any Microsoft OS running an NT-based kernel, including Server 2003.

While not harmful like the DCOM RPC exploit, anyone who sends an affected machine a specially designed UDP name server query on port 137, will receive along with the standard reply, random data from the system's memory. So there's the potential for hackers to get information from your computer -- although it'd be tricky to get the exact data they're after.

Make that almost impossible.

Any half-decent firewall will block the necessary NetBIOS port, including Windows XP's built-in firewall.

For more information, check out the Microsoft Knowledge Base article here.