SMTP Tar Pitting in Windows 2003 SP1

What is SMTP tar pitting?

Tar pitting is the practice of deliberately inserting a delay into certain SMTP communications that are associated with spam or with other unwanted traffic. To be effective, these kinds of communications typically rely on generating a high volume of traffic. By slowing an SMTP conversation, you can dramatically reduce the rate at which automated spam can be sent or at which a dictionary attack can be conducted. Legitimate traffic may also be slowed by tar pitting.

The tar pit feature is available in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and in several third-party SMTP servers. The tar pit feature in Windows Server 2003 works by slowing all responses that contain SMTP protocol 5.x.x error codes.

Tar pitting is a feature of Windows 2003 so Exchange 2000 can benefit too.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=842851

Scripting WMI Tasks: Accounts and Domains

Link

Can you trust ADU&C ?

Yesterday I was surprised to realize that ADUC won't report complete group membership, dsget and ldp report results ok.

This is explained in KB833883 and supposedly fixed in Windows 2003 sp1. However, while this hotfix is included in sp1, it's still needed to make the registry changes outlined in the same KB to make the hotfix work. Not entirely know why couldn't MS include that registry change altogether in sp1.

Please see the usernet thread I raised in details.