(via BoingBoing)
The SANS Institute has measured the average time between probes for a system on the Internet, it’s down to 20 minutes. In other words, the worms can find you before you have time to download all those security patches to make a new install of Windows XP safe(r).
They have a paper on how to get online safely.
If you have a system already, or a savvy friend with a CD burner, you can always slipstream the pathches into the XP install – that is, build new XP installation disks with the patches already in place. Here are some instructions for slipstreaming XP Service Pack 2 into XP.
Of course, if you’re really savvy, you could use Knoppix Linux to patch your XP system.