The Microsoft Internet Explorer security model allows a Web site to run any script or program that it trusts. The program exposes some fairly powerful functionality that allows a hostile Web site to glean information from a user's machine.

We're recommending as a work-around that customers who are worried about this vulnerability disable active scripting, while we develop a patch for this.

The real problem is Netscape Communicator taking a powerful script and putting it out on your computer in a locale where any Web site can find it out and run it.

The only thing that a Web site can do with this is read selected files from a users machine if they know the name of the file.

There is great customer interest in UPnP, especially as more UPnP-capable devices are becoming available. Folks who don't want UPnP can certainly turn off the service, but just applying the patch is sufficient to return it to safe operation.

Whether or not an operating system has a remote command shell says nothing about its ability to withstand other attacks such as denial of service attacks.