“Joy O’ Joy. You got mail. 10,000 of it…”

S if hijacked Windows boxes were not enough to attribute spam to Windows, have a look at the following story. As it comes from The Register, it is not reluctant to point out that mail floods were initiated by a Microsoft Small Business Server:

The problem was attributed to an improper server configuration, causing five servers to send out more than half a million emails to Dublin solicitors. The deluge of mail originated with a publishing company’s email marketing message, which was sent to solicitors. When some solicitors attempted to reply to the mail, a fault in the solicitors’ configuration of Microsoft Small Business Server sent the original email to their entire email database tens of thousands of times.

Putting the factors above together, Microsoft can no longer deny the fact that spam sometimes originates in their improperly-built operating system. The Windows advocates would argue that the server was configured badly, but should it not be intuitive and protect the users from themselves? Fortunately, there is no doubt in my mind that Dublin lawyers all use Windows, which makes it a dog-eat-dog situation.

Let us hope that the sysadmins have learned their lesson and realised that mail should not be administered by ‘Toy O/S‘. Other companies have learned that mail is better handled by Linux.

[HP’s] Schulz said that HP’s entire email infrastructure… is run on Linux and delivers in the region of three terrabytes [sic] of mail annually.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 11th, 2005 at 8:04 am and is filed under Linux, O/S. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.