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TechZilla Says:
Windows XP and Vista both use a little feature in Windows Update to try to lessen the blow of downloading and installing updates. It's called "Background Intelligent Transfer Service" or codename B.I.T.S. What it does is limit the amount of bandwidth Windows Update uses when downloading updates so you can still surf and read emails and generally not be bothered by the process.
But Guess what? BITS is trusted by both Windows and Firewalls. Now some new trojans are supposedly able to compromise and use BITS to download additional malware to your system undetected. I suppose Microsoft probably will have to re-invent the wheel again because of it.
The key to protect against this is of course like I've said many times before...keep your security software updated and don't do stupid things. By security software I refering to Firewall, Anti-Virus, and Anti-spyware software...you need at least one of each right?
Switching over from running automatic updates to manually doing Windows Updates from the Windows Update Website might not be such a bad idea. Of course you would need to turn off automatic updating in the control panel in the system properties. New updates typically don't come out untill the second tuesday of the month or so anyway.
With automatic updating turned off, you should not see the little downloading shield icon in the system tray by the clock any more. If you do then something funny is going on with your system and it may have been compromised.
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