Windows/NetBIOS pop-up Spam:

bofus writes "This article from Wired News presents a new way to deliver unsolicited advertising content - the MS Windows Messenger service. It appears that the client software hasn't been widely distributed yet, but it's probably only a matter of time before a free clone is circulating. This method could become the delivery method of choice for all kinds of unsolicited junk, given the number of unsecured PCs out there. On the flip side, if you run a relatively secured machine and have some sort of firewall, this probably shouldn't concern you."

Comments

already out there

[htmlboy]

two weeks ago, we had a big hulabaloo here at uiuc.edu because of this. all the win2k/xp machines on all of campus still running the messenger service got a popup describing how great our lives would be if only we had a diploma from a non-accredited university. most of the "administrative" users assumed it was a virus and panicked. then three more of the same came in this morning.

i just wish windows would log things like the origin of said messages so the abuse could be addressed at its source.

This is old hat...

[Mysticalfruit]

If you've got a machine out on the internet and you've windows networking turned on, you've probably got bigger problems.

A couple years ago, a co-worker of mine were at his house when he turned on windows networking and set his domain to "WORKGROUP" did the obligatory reboot suffle and started surfing all the shares in the area. It was hilarious, people had their entire C:\ drives shared, etc. Needless to say, after we got him setup with a firewall (linux/maq box) sure enough the logs just rolled with people trying to connect to ports 137/138/139. In one regard may ISP's block the netbios ports on their ingress and egress gateways.