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Security Pattern and Evolution of MTA Architecture

The architecture of qmail was carefully designed to overcome the security problems of sendmail. Postfix follows the qmail architecture closely but it also addresses performance as an issue. Postfix performs better than qmail in benchmark tests. The architecture of qmail and postfix uses a number of security patterns but they use the patterns differently in many cases to achieve similar goals. sendmail X is an ongoing renovation effort of old sendmail and it follows the best practices of qmail and Postfix. This poster illustrates the security and reliability patterns in these MTAs and charters the evolution of MTA architecture from old sendmail to sendmail X.