Turn Off Hidden Shares
With all the attention that spyware, phishing, e-mails, and corporate hackers get on any given day, we mustn’t forget that good ol’ Windows itself can be the source of a security hole. It turns out that Vista has a back door that could permit someone else to read any file on your hard drive, and the same problem exists in Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP. But don’t expect a fix anytime soon. This bug is a “feature.”
Before you can copy files from one PC to another on your network, you need to share the folder containing the files. That’s contrary to conventional wisdom, which holds that you should share only those folders you want made public and keep everything else unshared.
Enter Administrative Shares, which let network administrators perform maintenance remotely. The feature—which is turned on by default works by sharing your entire hard drive, and then hiding the share by adding a $ character as a suffix. But unless you’re in a corporate environment, you have nothing to gain by leaving this back door open and everything to lose.
1 Everything Looks Peachy
Open Windows Explorer, navigate to the Network folder in the tree, and select your own PC to see all (visible) shared folders.
2 Expose the Hidden Shares
To see a hidden share, type it into Windows Explorer’s address bar, complete with trailing $, and press Enter. Easy—if you know the name.
3 See Everything That Can Be Seen
Use the Computer Management tool (comp mgmt.msc) to see a complete list of all hidden and visible shares on your PC. You can right-click any shared item here and select Stop Sharing to get rid of it, but Windows will share it again when you restart unless you disable the feature altogether.
4 Plug the hole
In the Windows Registry (Start | Run, regedit), navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters, and create two new DWORD values, AutoShareServer and AutoShareWks, both set to zero.
5 Reboot and take stock
You’ll need to restart Windows for the change to take effect. But this time, the hidden shares have been banished to the land of wind and ghosts!
Tags: copy_files, Hard drive, hidden, Microsoft, network_administrators, network_folder, open_windows_explorer, security_hole, shared_folders, share_type, suffix, Windows, windows vista, windows xp
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[...] View: Full Article @ Arstechnicasponsor c39:28amPlug one of the Big holes in Vista….Hidden Shares Turn Off Hidden Shares With all the attention that spyware, phishing, e-mails, and corporate hackers get on any given [...]