Microsoft to ship new versions with firewall enabled

Thu Aug 14 19:04:24 UTC 2003

At 10:29 -0400 8/14/03, Sean Donelan wrote:
>John Markoff reports in the New York Times that Microsoft plans to change
>how it ships Windows XP due to the worm.  In the future Microsoft will
>ship both business and consumer verisons of Windows XP with the included
>firewall enabled by default.

Not being an XP user I haven't confirmed this personally, but I'm 
told that when an XP box with the latest updates/packs/whatever has 
IPv6 turned on, the included IPv6 "firewall" is automatically enabled 
with all inbound connections blocked. Apparently this change was made 
when they started including the p2p kit. I did recently see a case 
where an XP machine refused to answer IPv6 pings, and suspect that 
this was behind it. . .

Bill.