Good news and bad news on the home PC defense front this week.

Arrests in the Zotob worm case were noted by the Washington Post's SecurityFix blog. According to the report, the cyber-terrorists who launched the attack were planning to use account information in a huge fraud scheme.

Meanwhile, a story by Gregg Keizer in Computer Reseller News gives a heads-up on a vulnerability to a worm that launches Zotob-like attack found in PCs running XP Home edition SP1 in covering the information on Microsoft's original security bulletin MS05-039 and patches page describing the vulnerability.

On Tuesday, Microsoft issued Security Advisory 906574 announcing the newly discovered vulnerability in some XP systems.

Safe computing means staying on top of operating system issues as well as installing and updating virus protection and network safeguards. Be sure to stay up to date on all the PCs in your home. In addition to installing virus protection and keeping your virus definintions up to date, be sure and keep up with all of the patches and service packs for your operating system.

Just as we may lock our front doors, but accidentally leave a window open in our homes, sometimes we keep our main systems up to date, but may forget to monitor all the PCs on our home networks. If a worm enters your network through one of these, your security will be compromised. Are there any PCs in your home network that may be vulnerable?

Microsoft has a Security site with tons of information to keep all your PCs protected.

Practice safe computing!