The latest news from the Office of Information Technology
Phishing
On October 9, 2009, more than 6000 UCI affiliates received an email message claiming that they were required to click on a link which would take them to a web site to update their email accounts. This message has been confirmed to be an example of “phishing,” a malicious attempt to have you divulge personal [...]
Phishing is a name for fraudulent email messages sent by thieves to lure the recipient into divulging personal or financial information. Thieves can then use this information for mischief or profit.
These email messages pretend to be from well-known, legitimate businesses or organizations, and increasingly look as if they actually are. We’ve seen phishing messages sent [...]
In September 2007, NACS changed the configuration of the campus network to improve security. UCI’s Internet firewall (a device that controls off-campus access to UCI computers) now denies inbound connections except the ones that have been approved in advance by faculty and staff. This protects most campus systems from unauthorized access while preserving off-campus connectivity [...]
NACS has recently upgraded its password infrastructure to allow for longer passwords. Longer passwords are more secure because it becomes prohibitively difficult to discover a password by computationally grinding through all the possibilities. The “rules” for choosing a good password still stand: use a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and punctuation; don’t use [...]
NACS is working hard to ensure that a robust and secure UCInet is always available to do the University’s business. To that end, we will occasionally deny access to systems which threaten the safe operation of the network.
Whenever a system connected to the UCInet is discovered attacking other computers, or engaging in other forms of [...]
There are a great many ways malicious users of the Internet are devising to sneak software onto a computer. It can be simply annoying but benign (adware), invasive of privacy (tracking visited web sites), and even destructive.
Security patches and firewalls are excellent defensive measures, but if something gets past those defenses, it’s important to find [...]