WebProNews

The previously unknown presence of a beta peer-to-peer networking application in Microsoft Windows Vista caused some alarm for testers.

Nothing to worry about, a News.com report notes in its report of an undisclosed feature in the Beta 1 release of Windows Vista. A P2P application, turned on by default for beta testing, was the culprit behind suspicious traffic hitting those test workstations.

A Microsoft spokesperson said in the article the feature will not be turned on by default when the final version ships sometime next year. The application detects a network connection and tries to contact other Vista machines.

Not much information was given out about the P2P networking feature. Microsoft has been testing a file-sharing application codenamed Avalanche in England. Could this be Avalanche, or something derived from that research?

The article also quotes George Bakos, a security expert at the Institute for Security Technology Studies at Dartmouth College who is associated with SANS, as saying the "peer to peer service tags the PC with a new identifier." The Avalanche site says of its technology that it "includes strong security to ensure content providers are uniquely identifiable."

Coincidence?

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.