It’s only mid-September, classes haven’t even started yet but we’re starting to see phishing scam emails starting to land in email boxes. Fall term is when scammers try to get you to give up your login credentials. They assume you may be new to the College or have let your guard down after a nice [...]
Starting Spring 2023, access to services running on "high ports" (ie: network ports numbered 1024 and higher) on remotely accessible MCECS Linux systems will be blocked to external users. You will still be able to ssh into those systems. However, if you are running any services (programs) on these systems that listen at high ports, [...]
At the start of each academic year, we usually see a variety of attempts by scammers and other miscreants to try and steal your credentials, get you to give up money or personal information, or get you to run malware. This term is already up and running with a “Covid Test” phishing campaign. Make sure [...]
If you are a user of the following Linux systems, read on: linux.cecs.pdx.edu ruby.cecs.pdx.edu rita.cecs.pdx.edu At about noon on Monday, August 2nd, 2021, we will be changing the SSH keys on the Linux computers listed above. Anyone who has been logging into these systems on a regular basis will be greeted with a verbose “host [...]
In an attempt to modernize our SSH infrastructure, we’ve made some changes to SSH keys on our Linux computers. We’ve disabled DSA host keys, and enabled new ECDSA and ED25519 host keys. This process took a few days, and during that time a few hosts had their keys changed. If you are experiencing problems trying [...]
As we see yet another version of the “Send me your available text number” type phishing scam making the rounds, one of the most effective things you can do is this: If the spam is pretty obvious, especially if you’ve seen a variant of it before, directly report it as phishing to Gmail as soon [...]
As seen in recent headlines, institutionally targeted ransomware attacks are on the rise. The initial entry for these attackers seem to use many of the same techniques that we have seen in the past so it is becoming very important, as frequent computer users, to keep our guard up. This is particularly important for faculty, [...]
In recent weeks, we have had reports of these newer phishing variants landing in MCECS users’ mailboxes. 1) The “I want to talk to you about a student” query The email appears to come from another university and the sender usually has an email address that doesn’t match the originating university. It asks to schedule [...]
Recently, web site maintainers in MCECS have been receiving phishing emails disguised as complaints about the misuse of copyrighted images on their sites. The emails are often submitted through a contact form or to published contact email addresses. They often have a title that looks like: You have no legal rights to use my images [...]