Just disable upnp and/or stop forwarding the bitcoin port from your router, this limits you just listening to 8 connections.
Currently I leave the client closed and when I want to make a transaction it take as little as 2 min to catch up. I prefer to broadcast my transaction to 60+ connection than 8.
Given how trivial to implement is what I ask please stop the OS / router patches recommendation . Thank you.
You can tell bitcoin-qt to not use upnp from within the gui, also I don't see how 60 connections is better to broadcast a transaction v 8 connections, using only 8 also increases anonymity. You can also tell bitcoin-qt to use a tor proxy from within the gui.