[Linux-bruxelles] Microsoft Is Using Linux To Protect Its Own Web Site ;-)

[Jacobson ADSL Planet]

url :
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=74&ncid=738&e=9&u=/cmp/20030
821/tc_cmp/13100775

Microsoft Is Using Linux To Protect Its Own Web Site
Thu Aug 21, 3:35 AM ET  Add Technology - TechWeb to My Yahoo!

Microsoft has made a big deal out of asserting that Linux (news - web sites)
is not fit for the enterprise (news - web sites). But Microsoft itself is
using Linux to help protect its servers against denial-of-service (news -
web sites) attacks.


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According to a post on the Netcraft Web site, Microsoft changed its DNS
settings on Friday so that requests for www.microsoft.com no longer resolve
to machines on Microsoft's own network, but instead are handled by the
Akamai caching system, which runs Linux.


Akamai runs a service to help boost Web site performance by caching copies
of Web sites on many servers in many locations. Akamai can help defend
against denial-of-service attacks by spreading the attack among many
servers. Just as a distributed denial-of-service attack enlists large
numbers of systems to attack a single server, Akamai presents a distributed
defense against denial-of-service attacks.


As of this writing, Netcraft reports that www.microsoft.com is still running
on Linux, although microsoft.com is reported as running on Windows Server
2003.


A Microsoft spokeswoman said the company "respects the fact that [its
partners and vendors] may have diversified business models and operate in
mixed IT environments. Microsoft's main concern is doing whatever it takes
to help ensure customers can get to the Blaster worm patch to protect their
computers.... Microsoft is using Akamai's extensive worldwide network to
distrubte the massive traffic that is illegally being directed at Microsoft
by hackers."


The Blaster worm, which struck the Internet last week, was set with a
payload designed to trigger this past Saturday and flood the address
windowsupdate.com with a massive denial-of-service attack. But
windowsupdate.com never was a Microsoft site, it was an incorrect address
for picking up Windows updates. Until Saturday, Microsoft had set
windowsupdate.com to redirect to windowsupdate.microsoft.com; Microsoft
protected itself last week by switching off that redirection.


An Akamai spokeswoman declined to comment, except to confirm that Microsoft
is a customer.


Microsoft using a Linux service is ironic, given that Microsoft has
identified Linux as its biggest competitor. In a conference call with
analysts last month, company CFO John Connors ranked Linux as the #2 risk
faced by the company. The #1 risk was the general economic environment,
Connors said. Nearly one in five small and mid-sized businesses are using
Linux on the desktop.


In tomorrow's news: McDonald's executive found eating at Burger King.