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 [...]
Windows Computer Labs Remote Lab With the return to campus in Fall 2021, many of our Windows computer labs are returning to onsite-only operation. As the term begins, we will be offering a portion of FAB 55-17 (MCECS FAB General Lab - aka the “Intel Lab”) for remote access users to all MCECS students. MME [...]
Starting Fall term, access to the FAB/EB building is by PSU ID Badge only. We have added an online portal for MCECS students to request 24x7 access to FAB/EB and the following computer labs: FAB MCECS General Lab “Intel Lab” - FAB 55-17 EB MCECS General Lab “CadLab” - EB 325 CS “Particle” Linux Lab [...]
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, [...]
The Solidworks for Students offering is currently unavailable for new activations (or renewals). The vendor has changed their licensing scheme and we are working on departmental guidance for how this product may be provided to MCECS students in the future. If you need to use Solidworks, the production version is available in many of our [...]
During the break between Spring and Summer terms of 2021, we will be performing an operating system upgrade of the server that supports web pages in: https://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~user This change will happen on Wednesday, June 16th, 2021. If you have any web content on this server that uses PHP or any other programming/scripting code, we strongly [...]
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 [...]