WINS, the Windows Internet Name Service, is coming under attack all over the net by hackers. WINS is a NetBIOS name server used to determine the IP address associated with a particular host, similar to DNS. According to an alert from the SANS ISC (Internet Storm Center), there have been huge increases in the number of hacker probes directed at WINS ports. This comes not long after Microsoft released a patch for WINS, fixing a security hole which if exploited could led to serious security compromises.

The vulnerability, first detected last November, occurs in the way the WINS server handles computer name validation and association context validation.