Linux Online - WindowsUpdate on Linux - an urban legend is born

WindowsUpdate on Linux - an urban legend is born


Publication:	The Register	Date:	Aug 19 2003
Reporter:	John Lettice

Somewhere in Redmond a highly-skilled network technician flips the Big Red Switch (BRS) marked 'Do not touch this switch,' the Blaster attack is foiled, and the 'Linux to the rescue' urban legend is born. As all you paranoid conspiracy-theorists can see here, on the eve of the onslaught windowsupdate.microsoft.com ceased to be a Windows Server 2003 site minding its own business and running Microsoft IIS, and instead became a Linux site running (hint) Microsoft IIS.

The BRS episode is being reported in some places, weirdly, as Microsoft foiling Blaster, while more imaginative and hopeful beings have concluded that in an exercise of quite awesome cynicism The Beast simply moved the whole Windows Update shooting match over to a Linux host. Whatever anybody says, that one's sufficiently tempting to run and run, despite the fact that engineering such a switch would likely involve the dismantling of much of the Windows Update infrastructure. (No really, it is an infrastructure, sort of...)