Email Services
Laboratory for Computer Science Research (LCSR) provides email services to all graduate students, undergraduate students taking specific Computer Science classes, faculty and staff of Division for Computer and Information Sciences (DCIS). All DCIS users can be reached by emailing to username@cs.rutgers.edu where username is the netid of the user. As part of the mail services, all email addressed to username@cs.rutgers.edu are checked for spam and auto-executable enclosures before it is delivered to its final destination.
LCSR mail servers are divided into 6 different groups, Research, Faculty, Staff, Graduate, Undergraduate and general purpose. Except for the general purpose mail server, all other mail servers run on a Sun server as a part of the computer accounts for the particular category. The general purpose mail server provides mail service for faculty, staff and graduate students who need webmail capability and the better reliability of secure IMAP protocol not found on the Sun server. Future plans for LCSR is to have all email services be handled by the general purpose messaging server.
The general purpose mail server (dragon.rutgers.edu) is a single purpose server based on the CommuniGate Pro messaging server from stalker.com. This server runs on a fault tolerant Linux based operating system and features many standards that is not currently supported by the current built-in mail software included in the Sun servers. For example: the webmail interface.
This general purpose server is also used as the filter for all incoming email addressed to username@cs.rutgers.edu because it has special scripts to tag unwanted email (spam) and to check for any auto-executable enclosures, a typical signature of virus-borne email.
Some of LCSR mail servers usage statistics are available online. We collect usage data to analyze and identify any performance issues and project future needs. Some of this data are graphed in real time while some others are collected periodically.
- General purpose mail server statistics: http://login.rutgers.edu/mrtg/dragon/graph.cgi
- Faculty/Staff and Research mail server statistics: http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/mail-stats.html
- Graduate mail server statistics: not online
- Undergraduate mail server statistics: not online
Email users can come from anywhere in the world and since there is no guarantee that the usersŐs network is secured from eavesdropping, email access to all LCSR mail servers can provide secure authentication via secured POP3 or secured IMAP protocol to fetch email. These protocols, supported by all standard email client such as Netscape, Mozilla, Outlook, Outlook Express, make sure that user specific login information be hidden and private email stays private.
On the general purpose mail server, in addition to the secure POP3 and secure IMAP, LCSR also support Webmail interface which allows user to securely read and send email from any where in the world using only a web browser secured by Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol. The Webmail interface gives users the convenience not afforded by many standard mail client. It gives users instant access to their email with no complicated client setup required.
For sending email, only the general purpose mail server allow users to send email securely from anywhere in the world. Before sending any email, users must authenticate to the general mail server and all email is transported encrypted via secure SMTP protocol.
All other LCSR mail servers do not allow hosts outside Rutgers to send mail relayed through our mail servers. Users of these servers must use their local Internet Service Providers (ISP)Ős mail server to send mail.
Unwanted email (SPAM)
The Internet today is flooded with unwanted email traffic generated by bulk emailers. These unwanted emails a.k.a SPAM consume a lot of usersŐ time to filter through. In the effort to help users distinguish between important and unwanted email. The LCSR general purpose mail server runs a simple script in conjunction with Spam Assassins to analyze and tag every incoming email using a rating system. Every email is rated for its spam content and a tag is inserted in the header of each email containing a score. A score of 5 and above is considered a spam and an email header will note it as such. The decision on what happens to such email is left for further user action.
LCSR maintains usage statistics of all spam tagged since April 2003. This data is available at http://login.rutgers.edu/mrtg/spamfilter/graph.cgi
Dangerous Enclosures (VIRUS?)
Today, many viruses are distributed via email enclosures. Such email normally contained auto-executable files that get executed when users open its enclosures. To avoid virus infection of LCSR computers, all email addressed to username@cs.rutgers.edu is inspected for auto executable content. When such email is found, it will get discarded and not delivered to the end user -- a nice thing to do would be to send a notice to the sender explaining why. Unfortunately, the latest blaster virus unleashed in Aug 2003 exploited this notice by spoofing the From address of virus email to appear to come from email address all over the world. As the result of blaster virus, it is now a standard practice to simply drop the virus email and not notify anyone. Users are expected to NOT send any auto executable enclosures in email or risk loosing it.
LCSR maintains usage
statistics of all dangerous enclosures ever sent since November 2001. This data
is available at http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/dragon-attachment-stats.html
To maintain security of the systems, all LCSR servers are continuously kept up to date against newly discovered system vulnerabilities. To maintain the security of data transported between users and LCSR mail servers, all LCSR mail servers allow secure protocols such as secure IMAP, secure POP3, HTTPS and secure SMTP. These secure protocols ensure encrypted end to end data transmission to maintain data integrity and secrecy.