News from PANUG/BizNix - July 30, 2002
http://panug.org - http://biznix.org


APPLE SERVERS ARTICLE
submitted by a PCC student

The link below leads you to a web page called "Why You Should
Take a Mac User to Lunch" but the title is deceptive because the
information in the article is useful to anyone using computers -
not just Apple's computers. In particular, the latter part of the
article that focuses on cost of hardware, software, and systems is
enlightening. Read the whole article and you'll probably be
glad you did.

http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2002/0724.macx.html


EMAIL WARNING
by Ed Sawicki - Accelerated Learning Center / Tailored Computers

I just received an email message that was crafted to look like a
bounced message that I sent coming from my own server. In reality,
the message originated from a server at rr.com. The payload was a
file called surroundings.scr

I don't know what surroundings.scr will do if executed on a
Windows machine because I'm running Linux. I'm assuming it's an
attack. If so, these kinds of attacks are likely to be successful
with a high percentage of email users because users will think
their own mail didn't get through and they'll read the messages
to find out why. This is just another reason why, in a
Windows/Outlook environment, you must strip off attachments
before sending mail to user mailboxes.


HOTMAIL NOT SO HOT
by Ed Sawicki - Accelerated Learning Center / Tailored Computers

Most of these PANUG/BizNix email broadcasts are sent by my email server.
I've written a script that displays SMTP activity on the server's screen.
It enables me to see that messages are accepted or rejected in realtime.
For the past few months, I've noticed that Hotmail servers frequently
refuse mail for long periods. They apparently get overloaded and handle
the overload by blocking incoming messages, as they should under these
conditions. This may explain why some PANUG/BizNix members sometimes
complain that meeting announcements arrive too late to be useful.

Hotmail used to be based on FreeBSD, Apache, and qmail and worked well.
After Microsoft acquired Hotmail, they eventually converted it to Windows,
IIS, and Exchange after a well-publicized aborted attempt. When they
converted, they added more email servers yet Hotmail still can't handle
the load. Apparently, Exchange can't scale as well as qmail.

Note that both Postfix and Exim are two other highly-regarded email
servers that scale as well as qmail.