Exchange12Rocks

I figured Exchange12Rocks was pretty common knowledge, but talking to a few Exchange techies this past week, I guess it is not. It is time for thoroughly useless trivia. Allow me to explain.

When you install the first Exchange 2007 server in to your organization, a new adminsitrative group and a new routing group are created. All Exchange 2007 servers are installed in this administrative group. It is created for backwards compatibility. The administrative and routing groups are named:
CN=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)
CN=Exchange Routing Group (DWBGZMFD01QNBJR)


You might be tempted to think that these are GUIDs or randomly generated character strings, but they are not. They are simple "shift" replacement ciphers (similar to a Ceaser cipher).

Take FYDIBOHF23SPDLT as an example. Shift each letter "up" one letter in the alphabet. You get EXCHANGE12ROCKS.

Now, take DWBGZMFD01QNBJR. Shift each letter "down" one letter in the alphabet. You (once again) get EXCHANGE12ROCKS.

We knew that already.