Interesting Bittorrent client
One of my HIPS rules specifically blocks any access to a *.torrent file, for obvious reasons. Going through my HIPS logs today, I see the following event:
The process ‘C:\World of Warcraft\BackgroundDownloader.exe’ (as user [SNIP]) attempted to access ‘C:\Documents and Settings\[SNIP]\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\Y7YR4USA\WoW-2.3.3.7799-x86-Win-enUS-BKGND[1].torrent’. The attempted access was a write (operation = WRITE). The operation was denied and process terminated.
It’s fascinating to think that WoW uses bittorrent to manage itself, just not on one of my work machines, thank you very much. 
A better question would be why is World of Warcraft running on one of your work machines?
Anyway, with 10,000,000 players each needing a 100-200MB patch a couple times a year, whats a better way for distributing it?”
By MJD on 03.24.08 11:32 am
As far as i know, wow uses bittorrent to distribute new patches.
By Lukas on 03.24.08 12:32 pm
Well, unfortunately a vast majority of our laptop users are local administrators. The theory is, when they are remote and IT needs to support them, if they can’t remotely connect, they can walk the user through the actions.
But I agree with you, WoW shouldn’t necessarily be on a company laptop.
By Michael on 03.24.08 1:04 pm
bittorrent is the new content delivery mechanism of choice… i’ve even heard of a (i think) university using the protocol for distributing patches and images to clients… i imagine in the not so distant future it (or something arbitrarily similar) will begin to be used by companies like microsoft to distribute updates and other content that currently bogs down their pipes…
By kurt wismer on 03.24.08 3:40 pm
Three years ago I half-jokingly suggested to one of our developers that he should look into a CVS-bittorrent marriage to address our highly-distributed, yet highly-collaborative environment. Files wouldn’t be centrally stored but we’ll have a centrally-managed versioning system, which would address our problem just as you’ve said; by reducing the traffic that hampers collaboration due to centrally located file servers.
By Michael on 03.25.08 9:43 pm
[...] this week I observed one of my laptops running World of Warcraft accessing a *.torrent file. Today, I found another one, [...]