DCIS in the News

• WOWinC - Work Opportunities for Women in Computing is a free, day-long conference at NYU on Friday September 23, 2005 (corrected date) for female undergraduate and graduate students who are considering a career in computing and information technology. For more information, click here. Participating institutions are NYU, Columbia, Princeton and Rutgers, with sponsorship by IBM.

• April 11, 2005: Our chilled water feed (well, everybody on Busch's chilled water feed) is down while utilities does something or other. To keep the temperature in the machine room livable, we've started shutting down machines. The 'presidents' and 'kellys' have been turned off first. Others may be turned off on short notice as the situation unfolds.

• Feb 1, 2005: One of our password servers experienced memory problems this morning; this would have made logins very slow (and for a time, very not-working). The machine has been fixed; things should be back to normal.

• 11/5/2004: Bogus mail from "staff@rutgers.edu" (or other) to "user of Rutgers.edu" - a bogus notification, supposedly from Rutgers computing staff, tells users that the "main mailing server" will be offline for two days, and you should use "our free auto-forwarding service" (whatever the heck that is.) This is bogus, and if you follow the "more information" link provided, you're infected with the thoughtfully-provided virus that accompanies the message. Don't follow the link. The message is a fake.

• 8/24/2004:: The filer has returned!

• 8/21/2004: We suffered a major (and sustained) power failure this afternoon around 2pm, which lasted until around 5pm. Many server machines were safely shut down by automatic processes that watch for just such a thing, others went south when the UPS batteries finally gave out. Most machines and services are back, please let us know if you notice anything awry.

• 6/14/2004:ATTENTION MICROSOFT WINDOWS USERS
  There is yet another vulnerability in IE (which may also affect Outlook and Outlook Express -- this is -- href="http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/713878">CVE CAN-2004-0549, --> -- btw); this one manages to get around any 'security zone' protection you might have to run in "local machine mode" (which is typically run as you -- which for many home/dorm machines means 'administrator'). Until Microsoft comes out with a fix, you may wish to disable active scripting and activeX controls (see http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/malicious_code_FAQ.html#steps for more information on that.) Also, as always, keep your antivirus software up-to-date.

• 6/1/2004 Moving to secure services - On or about June 1, insecure services such as telnet and the "r-commands" (rsh, rlogin, etc.) are being disabled in favor of their SSH-based replacements. Some hints for adjusting to these changes are available at

      http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/ssh-notes.html
  

• 03/03/2004 Bogus-from-ed virus mail: - There is a new virus making the rounds as of March 2nd. It masquerades as an message from an official-sounding address at Rutgers -- telling you that the mail server is down, or your email address is about to be turned off, or that your machine is an open relay (and the attached file will make your machine 'safe') or the like -- and asks you to open an attached file with a password it provides. If you open attached the zip file (or pif file, or exe file, etc.) then infects the computer and sends itself out to others.

  It's generally a bad idea to open attachments you're not expecting, and this is one. Don't open it.

• 2/12/14:Research users of SMB access through samba.cs.rutgers.edu (luckystar) - passwd entries for research-only users were recently removed on aramis. You should use samba.research.rutgers.edu (jetli) instead.

• 2/7/2004:Power failure and email update - all machines are back up and operating by early afternoon of 2/6/2004, including the mail machine(by the late early afternoon of 2/6/2004 :-). Any problems to help@cs.

• 2/6/2004:Power failure and email - we took a power hit at 10:15am today; the cs.rutgers.edu email machines are proving slow to recover. We are working on it (feverishly, as you might imagine.)

• 8/26/2003:Microsoft Internet Explorer vulnerability. Another vulnerability has been discovered in IE 5 and 6. This vulnerability allows a malicious website to download arbitrary code and execute it without warning the user. Please patch your IE (using the Microsoft Windows Update feature, for instance), if you haven't already. (These days, I auto-update and go via the control panel every day :-) Count this as a blanket recommendation to keep all your Windows machines up to patch all the time...

• 8/20/2003:Variant of "Sobig" worm - there's a new version of the "sobig" worm ("Sobig.F"); it arrives with a bogus "from" field, with subject lines like "Thank you!", or "That movie", and others. DO NOT OPEN IT. For more information, see http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=100561. Information and virusscan updates are available from mssg.rutgers.edu.

• 8/12/2003:Microsoft Windows RPC DCOM vulnerability. We recommend you bring all your windows (NT/XP/2000/2003) machines up to patch; the most recent security vulnerability ("MSBlast"/"LoveSan") should be patched against as soon as possible. Here's MSSG's excellent patch page for it.-- see also their general windows security page.

• The Camden, Newark and New Brunswick/Piscataway campuses of Rutgers University will reopen for normal operations on Wednesday, February 19. Classes will be in session and offices will be open. The University will officially reopen at 12:01 am on Wednesday, February 19

• Here's the latest list of Divisional Colloquia.

• For spam-filtering, see our Spam page, and Don Watrous' how to ignore a user page.

• Aramis, athos, and porthos were replaced with newer machines on June 25, 2002. Please send mail to help if you notice any new problems with the new setup (which should appear to be the same as the old setup.)

• 20 April 2002 - systems are back up from another power outage, from around 11:45pm 20 April to around 1:30am 21 April. Most systems had to be turned off to conserve our UPS; all are back now, with the exception of brinkley. RUCS shut down everything, so our internet connectivity was lost until around 2:45am 21 April.

• 17 April 2002 - most systems are back up from the power hit we took yesterday afternoon just before 2pm. The power feed was out for around an hour; many machines were shut down to try and extend the life of our UPS, which lasted through the outage. Two server disks were lost (one to be replaced; files from the other being restored elsewhere), as was one microcomputer server (which has been replaced); various problems with desktops are being fixed as the problems on them become apparent.
  A Cautionary Tale: One research lab's machine ate its disk during the outage (we suspect there was a power spike just before power went out), and a substantial amount of research work appears to have been permanently lost. While the central servers are all backed up, many research-project controlled machines are apparently not. Backups are very handy when the power goes flooey; they cost money, yes, but with this summer promising to be hot (and perhaps brown-out filled), you may wish to consider your backup strategy (or perhaps create a backup strategy :-).

• 16 March 2002 - Another Microsoft-OS-affecting worm, claiming to be from the "Microsoft Corporation Security Center", subjected "Internet Security Update" tells you to run an attached file to obtain the latest security updates. This message is NOT from Microsoft, and after opening a backdoor on your machine, and setting itself up to run after reboots, it remails itself to everybody in your address book and every other email address it can find on your system. Do NOT open the attachment.

• 1 February 2002 - News-nb, our netnews feed, is still down is likely to remain down until next week. Although class newsgroups will still work, 'outside' newsgroups will remain pretty dry until news-nb comes back. (Update: It's back.)

• 28 January 2002 - Yet another Windows-affecting worm to watch out for: mail arriving with the subject "new photos from my party!" -- includes what appears to be a (currently yahoo) URL, but is actually a .com file that, among other things, mails itself to everyone in your (Windows, and Outlook Express) address book -- so the message appears to be coming from someone you know. Don't open it.

• 01/09/2002: (UPDATE) Yasgur back up and serving files after scrambling its system disk. No user files appear to have been damaged.

• Much of New Jersey will go to the required 10-digit phone number system on December 1, 2001. This will include dialup (modem) numbers! Remember to add the appropriate area code to your dialup scripts/control-panels.

• (UPDATED) -- ATTENTION MICROSOFT WINDOWS USERS --
  • 12/06/2001: OUTLOOK and OUTLOOK EXPRESS users -- Yet another email virus ("Goner") is out, this one claiming to be a screensaver. DO NOT OPEN the attached screen-saver program (.SCR) file, it will infect you (and send itself to everyone in your addressbook (plus your ICQ, if you have it)), plus delete files on your machine.

  • 9/18/2001: "Nimda" (or whatever they're calling it now) - there is a new version of "codered" which is attacking Microsoft IIS servers (using a different set of exploits). The wild-card in this case is that as part of the infection process the top-level page of the site is changed to add an attachment ("readme.eml", which, when expanded, claims to be a .wav file, but isn't). If you are asked to open "Readme.exe" by the browser, DO NOT DO SO (select 'cancel'). If you have set your browser to automatically open downloaded attachments, we recommend that you undo that. (Some versions if IE do not even ask or allow you to change that, unfortunately.)
    
    We further suggest that Internet Explorer users either turn off "Active Scripting" (that is, javascript) in your browser (click here for instructions) or avail yourself of the McAfee antivirus solution - just out. The McAfee software is free to RU faculty, staff, and student machines, and may be obtained at the MSSG McAfee page. Be sure you follow the directions for proper installation of the program, and the nimba update. to be found there.
    Mac users will also find antivirus software (Virex) -- found on the same page.

• (11/15/2001) -- ATTENTION Internet Explorer USERS -- Microsoft is recommending IE users disable "Active Scripts" until a patch is installed for a newly-publicized (and two other not-so-publicized) vulnerability that allows malicious web sites to steal personal information stored as cookies (like your credit card information if you shop online). See the CNET article for more information.

• Dr. Metaxes' seminar will be held in Core-A (Core, room 301A) Thursdays 6:10-9PM, starting September 20.
  The class code is 198:673:01.