Microsoft Issues Its Most Secure Update Ever
Microsoft is a company that takes a lot of heat from the public. Sure the Northwest giant may have made some tiny mistakes in the past, but it really does have its customers’ best interest at heart! Take the security update Microsoft issued earlier this week. If you think about it, Tuesday’s KB951748 security update is the most secure patch Microsoft has ever issued in its long and storied history. What’s the best way to ensure that Windows 2000 / XP users don’t come across any malicious code on the web or in their email? Kill their internet connection. Brilliant! Of course there is the slight chance that this end result wasn’t Microsoft’s intention. Perhaps they were merely trying to address the DNS issue discovered a few months ago and reported at length, and they screwed the pooch. The problem might just be that Microsoft has never heard of a little software firewall called ZoneAlarm. We can’t blame them though; it is after all, the most popular software firewall in the world. Countless Windows 2000 and XP users ran into quite a problem between Tuesday and today when a conflict between Microsoft’s security update and the popular firewall software resulted in the inability to access the internet. Mmm. Greatest line ever:
A spokesman for Microsoft said PC owners were not contacting it about any problems the update caused.
Hmm, perhaps that’s because they can’t get on the internet to contact you! After all, no one is dumb enough to try to call Microsoft Support anymore. Luckily CheckPoint has issued an update for ZoneAlarm already so Microsoft need not worry about cleaning up its mess. Note that PC users with the free version of ZoneAlarm may have to download and install the latest build manually. So what’s the deal Microsoft? Bill retires and the whole place goes to, umm, poop?
Tags: 2000, epic fail, firewall, microsoft, security, Software, update, Windows, XP, ZoneAlarm
How is this an Microsoft problem? Sounds like ZoneAlarm was doing something wrong if they relied on a broken way of doing DNS.
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Aint this some BS. I have two friends that I installed ZA on and now they cant connect to the net. Well I know what to do now. Preciate the heads up that Zach!
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My pleasure RicoW - Happened to me this morning as well!
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the problem is with zone alarm and not microsoft. i remember several years back i installed zone alarm on Win 98 (or XP) and the internet stopped working. zone alarm is sheer inconvenience for average non-technical but intelligent users.
i have vista with avast home edition for almost one and a half years and i never had any viruses or intrusions. i had a couple when i had norton on but i removed it after 2 months and installed avast.
i also dont buy xp is faster than vista argument. because in that case win 98 is faster than xp and DOS is faster than all!
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I have run ZA for years with few problems after running Norton with MANY problems. I will judge ZA by how quickly they ‘patch’ the Windows ‘patch’. How is ZA at fault when the software they protect is updated because of a serious flaw. I would hope ZA is working overtime to fix their issue. My ZA renewal is coming up, the clock is ticking.
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This story is retarded. I know that zonealarm is installed on a lot of pcs, but do you really expect ms to test this update on every piece of software that is written for Windows. I know bashing ms is the in thinkg to do now but give me a break.
Zach Epstein FTF.
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Jack ZA, update is already issued for ZA. Should be automatic for paid versions; free version needs to be downloaded manually for now.
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Is is that hard and unreasonable to expect MS to test their updates on PCs running security suites from the main vendors for these programs? The main vendors would be McAfee, Symantec and CheckPoint. That is a small amount of programs to test against and it would cover a majority of PC users. Am I wrong? I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect them to do that.
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Zach, thanks, I downloaded the Update and ZA now works fine, I’m keeping ZA. I dont expect ms to check other software, but I dont blame ZA for the problem either. Lets all be friends, lol.
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Definitely a Zone Alarm problem. I don’t run ZA and had no problems with the MS update. Shame on BGR for bashing MS for something that isn’t their fault.
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ZA the most popular firewall in world?
i’m sure ZA would like that to be true
i used it in past , when it was nice , small and effective.
as they grew , trying to be like norton, it got to be a hassle not worth it. it got to be regular occurrence of some type of conflict
IMO sygate and comodo and others are much better
not MS fanboy , but they can not test every possible config, user must take some responsibility
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It’s disgusting how much of a apple fan boy the boy genius really is. Seriously, was this the best sucker punch you could throw at microsoft?
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does this only affect ZA? what about a corporate environment?
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So the fact that ZA seems to be the only software firewall that encountered a problem makes you think it’s a MS issue?
Do you also blame MS for software that doesn’t work on Vista due to programmers who don’t follow correct windows programming rules?
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Wow, I’m a linux user, not an MS fanboy at all. Maybe an Ubuntu fanboy… but eh.
boygenius never deserved a lot of respect anyway, considering some of the garbage I’ve seen them post, like the story about Sprint requiring SEP plans even for PDA phones, which is not at all true.
Anyway, now, you really show your true, completely biased, and unrealistic face. I mean, it is CLEARLY not MS’s responsibility to make sure any software works on it’s OS. No OS, Linux, OSX… nothing worries about app compatibility. It’s up to the apps programmers to make it work on the OS they want it to run on.
Give me a break.
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Well, goes to show the true technical knowledge of the author. Funny how it’s an MS issue. Sure, MS is to fault on many issues…hell, the recent patch knocked out my HP Printer driver on one of the printers I use, but to say that MS is at fault is hysterical. No way in hell can they QA every single program written for their OS. And Zone Alarm the most popular firewall? That’s another funny one…
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Zach Epstein you got owned by poster, good job!
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For years, my cardinal rule has been, “It’s ALWAYS ZoneAlarm”. No matter what, the problem is always caused by za, whatever version. It can be minor, or so debilitating that you have to go thru major major uninstalls of perfectly harmless software otherwise. If you have a version of za which works, you keep it and never ever update it. A corollary is, “It might be the ZA anti-spyware.” I have registered versions which work on one XP machine and not another. It’s a horrible situation, and I just spend 8 hours helping friends try to figure out why their computer would no longer see the Internet if ZA was up. Thank you, BGR.
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Sorry, it was 3 hours, mostly because it’s a p3/500 on dialup, and I’m too chicken to do anything on the web without ZA being up, though it would have been a good thing, probably, to have that darn machine self-destruct so they’d buy something else. Their level of knowledge is that the machine is beige. I would have looked at the Zonelabs web site but I’m used to them being non-responsive, and issuing flaky software, that, nonetheless, I use, because it’s one less Microsoft product I have to contend with. So I never dreamed they’d have anything valuable to say. Coulda saved a lot of time…
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So do I uninstall Zone Alarm and my Internet will work? I installed the Windows update earlier this week and I can’t connect to the Internet. I’m running XP and have a Free copy of ZA on my computer.
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Wow! I uninstalled Zone Alarm from my computer and my internet works! Woo Hoo! Thank you Zach! You ended my 48 hour headache!!!!
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Having fixed a lot of computers in the last 24 hours, I can tell you that:
1. You can just bring earlier versions of ZA down and the Internet will work. You do not have to uninstall ZA. If you have a network, you may have to bring ZA down on all machines. Also see point 3.
2. Or you can uninstall KB951748. Do not accidentally mix that up with any other recent updates. Make sure you don’t accidentally install it again.
3. Inability to access the Internet is not the only problem caused by the two. If you have a Linksys router network, you may well not be able to see other computers on it, though the Internet is accessible to all of them. I can’t speak to other router brands.
The current version of ZA which works with the hotfix is 70-483-000. The home page of ZoneLabs does not mention the issue; click Support, and a big huge alert can’t be missed; click it and go to the page of downloads. This is a great opportunity, btw. ZA7 fixed problems I mentioned earlier about their anti-spyware product too.
All of the above was tested by me on:
1. XP Pro
2. XP Media Center
3. Windows 2000
4. Compaq, HP, Fujitsu, and Gateway, and Dell
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For what it’s worth…after uninstalling ZA and getting my computer to work I went to the ZoneLabs website and installed the updated free firewall. My computer now has the Windows update and ZA. And I can get back onto the internet. Amazing how easy it was…but boy…quite frustrating when I could not access the internet.
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What a surprise. Got an email from Zone Alarm regarding the issued update on their end to fix the issue. Wow, guess you need to write another article to apologize to MS for your stupidity!
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