Stop sharing all your files with the world.
By
default, Windows enables sharing for each logical disk on your system (e.g., C$ for the C: drive) in addition to another share called ADMIN$ for the %SystemRoot% directory (e.g., C:\WINNT). Although the shares are accessible only to Administrators it is wise to disable them if possible, as they present a potential security hole.
To disable these shares, open the Registry by running regedit.exe and then find the HKey_Local_Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\parameters key.
If you’re using Windows 2000 Workstation, add an
AutoShareWks DWORD key with the value of 0 (as shown in Figure 2-7) by clicking Edit→New→DWORD Value. For Windows 2000 Server, add an AutoShareServer key with a value of 0. When you’re done editing the Registry, restart Windows for the change to take effect.
After Windows has finished loading, you can verify that the default shares no longer exist by running
net share:
C:>net share
Share name Resource Remark
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
IPC$ Remote IPC The command completed successfully.Warning
Before doing this, you should be sure that disabling these shares will not negatively affect your environment. Lack of these shares can cause some system management software, such as HFNetChk [Hack #23] or System Management Server, to not work. This is because such software depends on remote access to the default administrative shares in order to access the contents of the systems disks.