Some scary stuff about Win XP?

Unfortunately, with Microsoft's closed source model, the world will never be able to validate whether or not Windows XP really has these security holes or not.

Just another reason to use Linux instead of Windows!

I can't comment on raw sockets, but the privacy issues aren't going to go away. Many companies have apparently got it in their minds that the primary value of the internet lies in its potential for spying on their customers.

The next few years are going to be tough for people who don't like to be spied on.

Bobby Bryant Austin, Texas

What are you talking about?

Steve Gibson's article is about the ability to program raw sockets in Windows XP. What security hole? You mean that feature that already exists on UNIX?

As for validating it, just write an app that uses these style sockets and there's the validation for you. You don't need to read the system source to figure that out!

Raw sockets have always been a part of UNIX. Security people would be sounding alarm bells if UNIX were to become common on the consumer desktop, too. The ability for packets to be spoofed on an improperly set-up system utilizing raw sockets is the problem and it has nothing to do with the Windows OS, per-se.

I'm not aware of any way in which WSH can use a socket. You would need to use COM for that, and I'm not aware of any COM that expose sockets directly.