Windows XP SP2 Has a Dangerous Hole! Or Not!
PCMagazine features a huge discovery: Windows XP SP2 Has a Dangerous Hole. It looks that an attacker can watch and eventually turn off your antivirus and your firewall on Windows XP SP2, because Microsoft allowed their control through WMI API.
Of course, an attacker is not waiting for you to turn off your firewall. If you are smart enough to use one, why would you turn it off?
But in order to kill your firewall, the attacker needs, as a prerequisite, administrative rights. I am afraid that, with adminsitrative rights, an attacker can do basically whatever he wants, without even bothering to turn off the firewall.