Microsoft DNS boo-boo breaks Hotmail for users around the globe

Someone at Microsoft has some explaining to do after a messed-up DNS record caused emails sent from accounts using Microsoft's Outlook Hotmail service to be rejected and directed to spam folders starting on Thursday. Late on Thursday evening, Hotmail users began reporting that some emails were being returned with errors …

[emfiliane]

Microsoft "Executive"?

Now you're really watering job titles down, El Reg. Senior Design Manager isn't even the top slot for a single product, that's Design Director, and that's not even close to C-suite.

Sucks for the dude and all, but he was middle management, not executive.

[Lord Elpuss]

Re: Microsoft "Executive"?

If he's executive-banded, then he's an executive. The job title doesn't say everything.

Besides. That big arrow flying over your head at 31,000 feet? That's the main point of this article which was that he was murdered in a horrible way, they've collared the alleged perps and one turned out to be his ex-wife.

[sitta_europea]

Microsoft and SPF.

It seems to me that Microsoft has a company-wide mental block on SPF.

That they've never been able to get it right should be obvious to anyone who's read RFC7208 and the headers of more or less any email sent from AS8075 in the past decade.

I put it down mostly to pique at Microsoft's failure to take over the world with their version 2 of SPF, which (a) didn't work properly, (b) caused confusion everywhere, and (c) still requires mitigation.

[heyrick]

They aren't wrong

I run a little private forum. I've blocked any email address containing @hotmail, @live, and @msn and the number of spam sign-up attempts has plummeted.

[sarusa]

A brief respite

If only it could have broken all of outlook, those are the truly good days.

[Steve Davies 3]

Move along there. Nothing new to see

MS and DNS are just incompatible bedfellows as we see almost every month.

It has to be time to fire those who insisted on a lock in to MS disasters (I refuse to call their crap: products).

[Julian 8]

Looks like El'Reg made a DNS /Executive error judging by the comments and having read the 2 stories they related to this morning

[Rainer]

If you manage DNS or mail, you regularly come across a lot of people who, while they have the power to change configs and DNS records, should normally not be let near either systems.

Because they have no f'ing clue about what they're clicking there.

Similarly for SSL certificates.

[Sora2566]

I really, really hope you mean TSL certificates.

[PeterM42]

Another Day...............

.............another MicroCRAP F-UP!!

[Ken Moorhouse]

recipient email services were unable "to confirm that [a] message came from a trusted location."

Whose idea was it to put things back the way they were before the change occurred?

===

"changing the SPF failure condition from soft to hard"

How the hell could this change have made it through to the real world? Smacks of malicious intent, to me.