Vista has network surprises for some beta testers
I saw something about this last week but held off until I could read a bit more. It seems that the Beta version of Windows Vista (the successor to XP) has a feature enabled by default that has caught a few testers by surprise.
Essentially it’s a peer to peer networking concept that when a Vista machine boots and connects to the internet it sends requests and contacts othe Vista machines and they form an ad-hoc peer to peer network. Now, all this traffic from various addresses raised the eyebrows of some testers suspecting this to be an attack of some sort.
PNRP is the name of this service (Peer Name Resolution Protocol) and Microsoft sees many uses including network gaming for this. It does raise a concern though that it’s enabled by default in the Beta without a mention. (Most Linux vendors give some detailed release notes even for testing releases, so I would have though Microsoft might do likewise.) It appears to have caught folks off guard. In light of the recent and ongoing virus/worm/exploit troubles on the Microsoft platform I would think that “on by default” for a network service (beta or not) would be a bad idea.
They (Microsoft) say that it will be disabled by default when Vista ships. Which is at least a bit reassuring. The protocol has been studied internally by Microsoft for vulnerabilities and they are “currently in discussions with external security experts for a third-party analysis.”
Popularity: 1% [?]
Related Posts - Windows Vista Beta notes... What follows are some notes that I've taken on the Vista beta that I installed into a VM. I've got a lot of toying around yet to do with it (and at least one Internet Explorer bug I want to mention.) But... I'll go ahead and post this. [warning -......
- Monad will not be in Windows Vista I wrote earlier about "proof of concept" viruses that targeted Monad, the next generation command shell from Microsoft. There had been talk that Monad would ship with Windows Vista and so some people were saying these "proof of concept" virii were the first to target Vista. Well, according to the......
- Two critical fixes from Microsoft on December patch Tuesday December's rendition of Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday will feature two critical security fixes. The malicious software removal tool will also be updated... Additionally, Microsoft will issue two non-security high-priority updates through Windows Update and Software Update Services, and three non-security high-priority updates through Microsoft Update and Windows Server Update Services.......
Related Websites - Save Time, Money and Space in Over 80 Ways If you're looking for handy gadgets, tools and various items that can save you time, money or space (or all three!) this list of more than 80 top products is just what you need. Everyone's got saving money on their minds these days- whether your at the grocery store, or......
- Microsoft Blogs Review Reading and reviewing corporate blogs from other companies is a great way to learn a little bit more about your own blog. Microsoft has a large community of blogs, and a wide variety of bloggers writing in numerous blogs within this community. There are a number of employee blogs in......
- Windows 7 Sales Spike to Overtake Mac OS X [/caption]Proving there is no accounting for taste Microsoftâs latest attempt at a decent operating system, Windows 7, is now running on 5% of the computers online. The daily average of online users as measured by Internet metrics company Net Applications showed that an increase last week put Windows 7 above......
Similar Posts
- Windows Vista virus
- WMF patch is the first patch for Microsoft Vista
- Internet Explorer 7 beta coming early next year
- Windows Vista Beta download
- Mandriva Linux 2006 Beta 2