The two major vulnerabilities Windows XP should know

One of the first reasons people want to build a home network is to share an Internet connection, which is directly supported by both Windows XP Pro and House, and another reason for file sharing.

However, if you have considered this problem carefully, you will find that it is not so simple. For example, it is necessary to easily access all resources from any PC, and to prevent children at home from operating the stock software at will-this requires file sharing to be open only to a subset of the members of the family. For this requirement, Win9x can meet, allow passwords to be set for shared resources, and most of the win NT family's operating systems can be met, allowing access for individual users and groups-with one exception, the Windows XP Home Edition. If you are planning to set up a home network, be sure to think carefully before you decide to choose a version of Windows XP.

One, the lack of security of shared folders

The Windows XP Home Edition designs a technology that Microsoft calls "Simple File sharing" for shared folders. Open the Sharing tab of the Properties dialog box for any folder, as shown in figure, you can see that the options here are very different from previous windows. Although the dialog box in figure one prevents users from modifying the files in the shared folder, they lack the licensing options available from other versions of Windows.

Figure I

Because Windows XP Home does not allow you to set the password for a shared folder, either make the folder open to everyone or to all people. Obviously, this does not meet the requirements of most home network users, because once the shared properties of a folder are set, there is no way to prevent anyone from accessing it.

If a folder belongs to a user's private profile (for example, My Documents), the Simple File sharing feature allows you to lock the folder, simply by selecting the "Make this folder private" option. Enabling this option prevents other users from accessing the folder, but it requires that the file system be NTFS. On the other hand, after the folder is set to private in the NTFS file system, the user is no longer able to access it from the remote PC.

On PCs that use NTFS, Windows XP Home allows for user authorization, as in Windows XP Pro or win 2K. The problem is that there are no security tabs on the Drive or Folder Properties dialog box on NTFS volumes in Windows XP home. The only way to set permissions is to log on as an administrator, which can only be done in Safe mode (the way to start the system in Safe mode is to hold down the F8 key while booting the system and then select Safe Mode with network connectivity). After you log on to the system with the administrator, open the Shared tab of the Shared Folder Properties dialog box and click Permissions. As shown in Figure II, you can set up Full control, change, and read permissions for users and groups on your network separately. If you want to set permissions for users not included in the list, click Add, Advanced, Find Now, select a user from the list of users (including only local users), and then set their permissions.

Figure II