Sonicwall’s e-mail security system was struggling with a bug that made logs and the spam inbox inaccessible. An update fixes the problem.
Sonicwall was struggling with a bug in its e-mail security solution. The bug resulted from a problem with Microsoft Exchange. After the New Year, mail traffic over Exchange was temporarily down worldwide. The cause: a Y2K bug with a 22-year delay. The value for the year 2022 caused a data string that was too large for the Int32 data type used in servers. That, in turn, caused mails to get stuck.
Patch
Sonicwall’s mail protection for Exchange suffered the same bug. Fortunately, the impact was less severe. Mail traffic continued to run, but administrators could not access log files and the mailbox for spam also proved inaccessible. Late last week, Sonicwall finally launched an update that fixes the bug. Specifically, it involves three patches: one for Hosted Email Security, one for Email Security Appliance (on-premises) and one for Firewall Anti-Spam Junk Store.
It goes without saying that organizations that rely on Sonicwall to secure their mail traffic had best update quickly. The bug could have arisen because of an error by Microsoft, which failed to ensure via an update late last year that the new year would not cause problems. Further, the problem shows mostly a light version of what doomsayers feared at the end of last millennium.