News from PANUG/BizNix - September 5, 2003
http://panug.org - http://biznix.org


WINE HELP
We have a customer who wants to run our program under
WINE on a Mandrake box. Has anyone had any experience
with issues in this environment?

Please respond directly to:
Jeremy Grand 


SPAM SAFEGUARDS
by Ed Sawicki - Accelerated Learning Center / Tailored Computers

The massive volume of spam mail and the countermeasures
that people use to fight it have created some serious
problems for e-mail. The best recent example of this is
the Osirusoft DNSBL spam blacklist that was the victim
of a distributed denial of service attack - most likely
conducted by spammers.

The list's administrator responded by setting the list
to block mail from ALL IP addresses - an all too effective
spam-suppressing technique. Any site using the list and
not also using a white list could receive no e-mail
messages from anyone. Which brings us to the importance
of white lists.

If you don't have a white list and you rely on black lists
or other such techniques, you're likely to have problems. 
I've configured my systems to allow people to easily
get placed on our white list. You can take a look at
one of my company web pages to see how I do it:

http://www.tailoredcomputers.com/contact.html

Note that if you try to use the form on that page it
will not work right now. It's been disabled while it's
being redesigned for more automatic operation.


MICROSOFT OFFICE IN LEAD
by Ken Barber

This morning on Newsforge:

"This week Microsoft Office once again affirmed its
leadership in the office software world by releasing
news of not one, two, or three, but five security holes.
Meanwhile, OpenOffice.org, the primary open source
competitor to MS Office, has no vulnerabilities to
report."

For a great laugh, read the rest of the article at:
http://panug.org/37


"If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, then
you will be hacked. What's more, you deserve to be hacked."
Richard Clarke, White House Chief of Cyber Security (Retired)


The Department of Homeland Security has selected Microsoft
as their primary supplier.


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