Sendmail, the UNIX program that handles electronic mail, is commonly referred to as a beast.
The new NT version of Sendmail, like its Unix counterpart, includes strong spam-blocking capabilities.
Such viruses can be blocked with Sendmail -- but not with Microsoft Exchange.
When asked if an NT box running Sendmail would be as secure as a Linux box running Sendmail, Hodges demurred.
In its press release, Sendmail says that the new product, based in part on technology which the company acquired last year from MetaInfo Inc.
That is true but slightly unfair, as sendmail has a much longer history than most MTAs, and it has been clean for quite some time.
Ozancin wagged his finger at the sendmail mail transfer agent (MTA) as the cause of many past security exploits, including but not limited to buffer overflows.
In fact, the MTA that forms the core of Sendmail for NT is the same as the open source MTA currently used in Unix versions of the product.
Sendmail is selling a commercial version of the software with a special graphical interface, but it is also supporting the development of a free version of the program.
Sendmail can also be used in conjunction with programs like Exchange for companies that are looking for a more secure MTA, but still need Notes-like interoperability on the Microsoft platform.
Sendmail's new NT 3.0 product provides NT administrators with security features, like header scanning, relay access control, and better defenses against theoretical attacks, to which Unix and Linux system administrators are already accustomed.
But he did say that, in some cases, an NT box running Sendmail will be more secure than an NT box running Microsoft Exchange -- which he identified as probably Sendmail's largest competitor in the MTA space on NT.
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