Windows security improving?

Just when you thought that Windows security was improving, with releases such as Server 2003 and Xp SP2, you find that they have just taken an enormous leap backwards! A bug has just been found in these two operating systems that leaves them vulnerable to a LAND attack. I mean a land attack for god sake! This was an issue in the late 90s, on Windows 95 machines but surely not today? Well yes Im affraid so - check the details here

For those of you who need a refresher on the LAND attack, it involved sending a spoofed packet to a machine with a return address that is the same, that of the attacked machine (source and destination IPs the same). So the system thinks it got a message from itself, and replies - to itself!

This used to lock the machine up or cause it to crash, this latest vulnerability causes the machine to lock up for 15-30 seconds but repeating the attack would obviously result in a denial of service attack.

I just cannot believe that they have taken such a leap backwards - what next, will we see a return of the ping of death ? How can we take their trustworth computing initiative seriously now?