We’ve seen many UVM customized phishing scams recently, including one that mocked up our webmail login page exactly.
The only legitimate email regarding password or status changes to your UVM email account is the one that comes from David Todd and DOES NOT ask you to do anything but go to the UVM account page to change your password.
Please be alert when following links in any email and make sure that the URL of what you clicked on makes sense. For any UVM related service, the URL should end in “uvm.edu”. If it does not, then chances are high that the link is part of a scam.
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Have you heard of UVM Guestnet?
Recently a CAS faculty member approached me with a problem; she was the designated escort for a visiting professor who had his own laptop and wanted to use UVM’s wireless network. Sure, she could have had him install the UVM VPN client software and then connect to Cat’s Paws using her UVM netID, but then she’d have to reveal her password (which is against UVM policy) or stick to him like glue the entire week he was on campus.
I suggested UVM Guestnet. UVM Guestnet is a special wireless network that allows UVM affiliates (faculty, staff, students, basically anyone with a valid UVM netID) to “sponsor” a non-UVMer and allow them to connect to the Internet. The catches are that the sponsor is responsible for the behavior of whomever they sponsor, plus the account expires in seven days.
To begin the process, connect to the UVM Guestnet page on any computer currently connected to a network. Enter your UVM netID and password.
Read the page of policies and instructions, then click Get Started.
After you fill in the three required fields and click Create, your guest will be able to connect to the “UVM Guest” wireless network and start up a web browser. Their browser will ask them for the ID and password created by the Guestnet web page and then allow them onto the Internet as usual.
Each UVMer may sponsor up to five people for a maximum of seven days each.
UVM Guestnet access basically gives the user access to the public side of UVM’s local network (www.uvm.edu, webmail, etc) as well as the broader public Internet. It is not intended for use by those who otherwise have an active UVM netID or who need access to restricted or secure UVM only resources.
As always, ask us here at CAS Computing Services if you have questions.
Still looking at a red “eyeball”?
Are you still looking at a red “eyeball” NOD32 icon in your Windows XP or Vista system tray?
It has come to my attention that some are still waiting for NOD32 to “fix itself” as I mentioned it would back in November. The NOD32 license has long since been renewed and thus if you’re still looking at a red “eyeball” icon, then there’s something else wrong and you’re going to have to take additional steps to get your anti-malware software working again.
Unfortunately at this point, you can’t just install the new version on top of the old. So, please do the following:
1) Download the most current 32 bit version of NOD32 from http://www.uvm.edu/software to your computer.
2) Go to Start | Settings | Control Panel | Add/Remove Programs on Windows XP or Start | Settings | Control Panel | Programs and Features under Vista.
3) Locate ESET NOD32 antivirus in the list of installed programs, click it and uninstall or remove it. When finished, restart your computer.
4) Double click the current version of NOD32 that you downloaded in step one and allow it to install. Under Vista, you will need to confirm any User Control alerts that appear during the install process.
Ultimately you should have a green eyeball in the system tray and, if you “hover” your mouse over the system tray icon a pop up will appear and it should tell you that you’re running version 3.0.684.0
As always, contact CAS Computing Services if you have questions.
Announcing the CAS Computing Services blog
CAS Computing Services has a new blog! Check it regularly for news and timely information regarding computers and Information Technology within the College of Arts and Sciences.
Search the archives by tag, keyword or category for how-to postings and other information.
You can view the blog either on the Computing Services web page.
Directly via the blog page, or as an RSS/Atom feed in your email program.
Click here if you don’t know what an RSS feed is (no shame here, I didn’t know until very recently).
As a rule, we will only send out email notifications of the most important postings, so please check the blog often.
Running over your Inbox quota?
Are you getting notices that you’re approaching the limit of your 50 MB Inbox quota?
Are you involved in a collaborative project that is generating lots of big email attachments?
Aside from the usual recommendations that you delete email you don’t need, file it in IMAP mailboxes other than Inbox and don’t forget to make sure that whatever email client you are using is set to purge at some point (verify this by logging into your account via webmail)
One easy way of handling this is to divert “big” email messages out of your inbox and into another IMAP folder as they arrive.
You can do this in the UVM filtering website:
http://www.uvm.edu/account
Log in using your UVM netID and password
Click on Email Filtering
Click Add New Filter
Under “Filter Big Messages” choose the minimum size message that you want filtered and then either select an IMAP mailbox to have the messages moved to, or select New and enter a new folder name.
The messages will be filtered into that folder with no other intervention from you. You can read the mail from that folder via webmail or any other IMAP capable
Vista activation issues
Pretty much every Optiplex GX755 desktop purchased and deployed by the College during January 2008 has had Vista activation issues. We believe that this issue was triggered by the recent deployment of Vista Service Pack 1 through Active Directory.
The version of Vista that we use here at UVM is Vista Enterprise. Vista Enterprise uses a centralized license server, called a KMS server, to provide authentication information back to Vista, “authenticating” Vista for another time period after which the computer will again look for the KMS server.
If the computer cannot find the KMS server, the original version of Vista would go into Reduced Functionality Mode (RFM) which is another way of saying that it becomes useless. As of Service Pack 1, Microsoft has eliminated RFM. Instead Vista Enterprise will become nagware, posting endless notices that you may be running pirated software and asking you for a product key. The product key on the sticker on your computer is, of course, for the OEM version of Vista which is NOT what’s currently installed on your computer
The fix for this is to simply provide the generic product key (VKK3X-68KWM-X2YGT-QR4M6-4BWMV), which tells Vista Enterprise to look for the server again and all is well.
Geoff Duke has more information on this on his Blog