May 3rd, 2002 by Dana Roode
Many UCI communities make use of electronic discussion lists to send announcements and to foster communication among group members. Such communications are facilitated by “list management software,” such as the Listserv service NACS has provided to the campus for many years. This software tracks and controls who subscribes to which lists, who can post to which lists, and other administrative tasks.
NACS is pleased to introduce a new list management package called Mailman that offers significant improvements and simplifications compared with Listserv. Mailman provides a web interface to each mailing list, including facilities for list managers to administer lists and for individuals to subscribe, unsubscribe, or adjust their subscriptions (e.g., choose delivery options). Mailman also allows access to list archives to be limited to subscribers and provides many other useful features not present in Listserv.
Your subscription to NACS News, which has long been a Listserv list, has been automatically transferred to the new Mailman list. You can manage your subscription to this and other lists NACS sponsors at http://www.nacs.uci.edu/org/nacslists.html
Please see http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/maillists/ if you manage a Listserv mailing list that you would like to convert to Mailman, if you would like to start a new mailing list, or if you would simply like to know more about Mailman.
May 3rd, 2002 by Dana Roode
In light of the many viruses and network attacks directed against Windows systems (klez, myparty, Code Red, nimda, etc.), proper security planning is a necessity for departments using Windows 2000 (W2K) or Windows XP (WXP) and Microsoft software such as Outlook, Exchange, or Internet Information Server (IIS).
Common security practices and updates have consistently kept most systems secured against such attacks. But the staff time required to maintain reasonable security is rather costly. NACS will continue to publish the best available information on installation, configuration, and security of Windows systems. (See http://www.nacs.uci.edu/w2kinfo andhttp://www.nacs.uci.edu/security/virus.html).
Windows system administrators are advised to consider Microsoft’s HFNetCheck tool as a good internal Hot Fix/service Pack auditing tool for W2K/IIS systems. Microsoft Baseline Security Advisor (which works with HFNetCheck) or Cerberus Internet Scanner v.5.02 are also worthwhile simple, free security auditing tools.
NACS hosts periodic meetings with Computing Support Coordinators and other departmental Windows system administrators to discuss security and other timely issues. Please contact NACS if you would like to participate.
NACS also hosts a number of discussion lists which provide timely information on virus and security issues, including UC-Antivirus, Network-Security-Alerts, and UCICSCG. Interested readers are invited to browse http://www.nacs.uci.edu/org/nacslists.html for descriptions of these and other lists, or to subscribe.
May 3rd, 2002 by Dana Roode
NACS and Residential Networking (http://resnet.uci.edu) are working together to provide students with a high-performance network, while at the same time preserving sufficient network capacity for use by faculty and staff, encouraging students to use the network only for legitimate educational purposes, and managing security in a situation where users and machines may come and go at any time.
A previous article (http://www.nacs.uci.edu/news/2002.3.html#2) introduced the Packeteer traffic-shaping device which regulates the fraction of UCI’s connection to the Internet which is available to the residential communities. In addition, NACS and ResNet have installed a custom-designed DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) server which enhances the security of UCInet by requiring computers on ResNet to be registered and authorized.
Authorization (access to UCInet) is only granted to registered systems, and registration requires a valid UCInetID and password. Unregistered systems are automatically directed to the registration process. The requirement for registration limits access to UCInet to systems owned by legitimate users, and allows record-keeping so that inappropriate use can be traced back to its source, as required by law.
ResNet has published a set of guidelines which instruct students in appropriate network use, and how to go through the registration process to gain access to UCInet (http://resnet.uci.edu/connection_policy.html). ResNet currently supports over 7000 users.