A copy of Windows 7 leaked before today's Release Candidate code availability from Microsoft contains a trojan. Yet even with Windows 7 available from Microsoft's site, odds are that malware-bearing torrent copies will continue to circulate. Make sure your employees steer clear.The availability of a close-to-finished version of Windows 7 directly from Microsoft today should be all you need to keep your systems (and its users) away from the pirated version that's been floating around the BitTorrent streams for the past couple of weeks.

(They should have been steering clear of illegal P2P files on your business's systems and over your business's bandwidth anyway, but that's another blog.)

Some of those leaked copies deliver malware to your machines, along with the unlicensed 7.

The malware appears to be pretty generic scareware fake anti-malware calls which, one assumes, anyone looking for Windows 7 would know enough to avoid, but still...

Today's free availability of the Release Candidate (RC) direct from Microsoft should tamp down some of the demand for the leaked (and infected) copies, but there will still be those who take the BitTorrent route rather than "stand in line" for Microsoft's historically ... challenging (at times of high demand) servers.

Make sure your people aren't among those making that mistake. Microsoft's Windows 7 page is here.

Here's bMighty's early look at Windows 7 and what it means for your business.