Window Update Breaks Zone Alarm
By“In This Corner, Window Update!”
Flaming your firewall
Today after automatically downloading and installing a Windows networking update, KB951748, thousands of XP users found they no longer had access to the internet. Zone Alarm, a popular 3rd party firewall, interpreting the update as an attack declared internet access denied. So what lesson have we learned?
While IT consulting and, even now, I never allowed Windows to automatically update via the normal consumer windows process. Only if pushing out updates via SMS (Systems Management Server) or alike, would I allow any type of automation.
This exact situation has burned me so many times. You arrive at the office or get the 6AM call from your site admin who is screaming ‘the internet is down no one has access, I checked 5 different computers’. So now you can’t even access the systems remotely to troubleshoot. You call the ISP and they say ‘we can ping the router’ and now before you have even had your coffee, your incompetent.
Now, several hours later, you arrive at the office, sleep deprived and incompetent, surrounded by dirty looks. They have all missed a deadline, lost their bonus and, it’s now your fault because you are the one who is there to fix it.
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3 Comments
5:15 pm
If I am manually installing Microsoft updates, how can I know which ones will conflict with software installed on my machine?
I got hit by this schemozzle yesterday and it cost me an afternoon’s work. Currently I have my system operating because I dropped Zone Alarm’s Internet Security down to medium. I know that’s not ideal, but I also have some firewall protection via my ADSL router (Dlink DSL-504T). My inclination is to keep going as I am, rather than uninstall the Microsoft update. And I’ll wait for a patch from Zone Alarm, which I suspect won’t take long! How safe do you think my strategy is? My worry is that if I uninstall the MS update, it won’t get installed again and presumably it contains _some_ stuff that’s desirable.
7:22 pm
John, often times Microsoft will release kb updates with white information at
HTTP://support.microsoft.com/kb/UPDATENUMBER
you need to keep in mind that they will not know all the possible conflicts that can arise.
I think you should be fine with the action you have taken providing you *practice safe surfing* as they say.
8:27 am
I would suggest making sure your firewall is up to date too.
windows 7 is out soon it looks good on the surface and will have even more protection built in,I wonder what we have in store, how many more dirty looks?