The trouble with NetBIOS
NetBIOS has a long history in networking and was first put into use in 1985 by IBM.
When Microsoft came out with its first Windows-based network operating systemâ€"Windows For Workgroupsâ€"they used an adapted version of NetBIOS for Windows and called it NetBEUI. Microsoft chose to use NetBEUI as the primary protocol for its networking software because it was very small and extremely efficient for small LANs consisting of between 20 and 200 computers. One of the things that made NetBEUI so great was the ease with which resources could be named, shared, and accessed in a workgroup (or peer-to-peer) network.
As the Internet and the World Wide Web burst on the scene, computers all over the world could easily connect to one another using the TCP/IP protocol, HTML, and browsing software such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. On the surface, users could interact with the Internet via their browsers; behind the scenes, their Windows-based systems used TCP/IP.
TCP/IP is the only protocol required to interact with the Internet. When you install TCP/IP on your Windows system, chances are good that NetBIOS and its wide-open file and printer sharing features, tag along by default. When this happens, chances are that you're leaving the backdoor open and don't even know it.
Leaving NetBIOS enabled thus means that your computer could potentially be sharing your hard drive on the Internet. In addition, all the files on your hard drive containing personal information are available to anyone who knows how to track this unlocked backdoor.
