Academic Technologies

Academic Technologies
Service Alerts

2/20/08

New Hoax asks for password - do not comply

Columbia has been hit by a phishing email asking for a reply of the Columbia password. Remember, the College and University will never ask for your password in an email.
Here is a sample of the current hoax:

Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008
From: Columbia Support <support@columbia.edu>
Reply-To: columbiayou@yahoo.com
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject: Verify Your E-mail Account

Dear Columbia Webmail User,

To complete your Account Verification process, you are to reply this message and enter your password in the space provided (********),you are required to do this before the next 48hrs of receipt of this e-mail, or your Webmail Account will be de-activated and erased from our data base.

Your account can also be verified at: https://cubmail.cc.columbia.edu/horde/imp/login.php

Thank you for Using Columbia Webmail.

Columbia Webmail Support.

1/28/08

New IRS spam

Watch out for the latest hoax! We received this warning from our colleagues at Columbia.

"A new round of fake mail supposedly from the Internal Revenue Service has just started. Last year's version claimed to be from irs.gov, but this year the con claims to be from irs@getrefundnow.com and similar dot-com domains. The email promises you get a tax refund, and all they need is your bank account information including your cash machine PIN. "

Just delete this email.

1/15/08

Help Desk - Limited Schedule

From Wednesday, January 16th, through Friday, January 18th, Academic Technologies Staff will be involved in an intensive training session with our student employees. During these 3 days, the Help Desk (x4-7172) will have minimal coverage for "over the phone" support and limited onsite assistance. If you have a serious computer problem during this time, please send an email to help@barnard.edu or leave a message on the Help Desk phone (x4-7172). Staff members will check email and voice mail during the day.

Thank you for your cooperation.
Andrew Blaner, Associate Director for Technical Support Services

01/08/08

Barnard College Server Downtime

The office of Management Information and Network Services will be performing necessary system updates to Barnard College servers on Friday, January 11th and Saturday, January 12th. Please read this communication carefully as the updates will disrupt numerous services. If you have any questions, please contact the Help Desk at x4-7172.

Schedule for Friday, January 11th:

10:00AM - 11:00AM Dormitory wireless authentication system -

this downtime will affect access to the secure, authenticated wireless in Sulzberger and Elliott Hall

1:00PM - 3:00PM Faculty, staff, and student e-mail servers

Updates on the e-mail system will ONLY affect Pine users. All webmail, Outlook, Thunderbird, and Eudora clients will NOT be affected. If you use Pine, please be sure to logout of the server prior to 1:00PM.

Schedule for Saturday, January 12th:

10:00AM - 12:00PM web (www staging server), www, and the nexus bulletin board

This downtime will affect the Barnard College website and staging server. There will be no access to the web server after 7:00PM Friday evening. Please do not attempt to make any web site updates until Saturday at 12:00PM.

10:00AM - 2:00PM eBear and Calendar

The eBear portal and associated applications will be unavailable for the duration of this time period. All on and off-campus users will be affected. In addition, access to the Oracle Calendar at https://calendar.barnard.edu will be completely unavailable.

10:00AM - 5:00PM Novell file sharing (ARTEMIS and DIANA)

Novell file sharing will be unavailable for the entire window due to numerous complex updates. After the updates are completed, users who have left their computer on may have to reboot in order to reconnect to ARTEMIS, the filing sharing server.

11:00AM - noon Authenticated SMTP

Authentication to outgoing e-mail servers (SMTP) will be unavailable. This will only affect off-campus users who have set their machines to use Barnard College's SMTP server, and some users of Treo and Blackberry devices. This will ONLY affect outgoing e-mail. Outages during this window will be intermittent.

We apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for your patience and understanding while we perform this necessary maintenance.

12/12/07

Construction Update from Facilities : Winter Break Electrical Power Shut Down -- Altschul & Milbank Hall

We'd like to remind the members of the Barnard Community that an electrical power shut down has been scheduled for December 27 & 28. The shut down will begin at 6am on Thursday 12/27 and continue until 7pm Friday 12/28 (36 hours). This shut down has been planned for these dates to coincide with the college's Winter Break. This service curtailment is required to facilitate the installation of the electrical service for the Nexus building construction presently underway.

The shut down will affect electrical power to Altschul Hall and Milbank Hall. In order to protect against cold weather and safeguard critical scientific equipment as identified by various departments, the college will rent an emergency generator to supplement the present Altschul building generator. The supplemental generator takes a few hours to connect at the beginning of this process and also to disconnect at the end of the process. We anticipate that there will be no power in parts of Milbank on 12/27 from 6am -- 10 am and on 12/28 from 6pm - 9pm. Altschul's generator will begin working immediately.

Campus Wide Impact:

This shut down will result in a loss of computer network service (e-mail, internet, file sharing, administrative applications) on 12/27 from 6am -- 10am and again on 12/28 from 6pm - 9pm in all administration buildings including Lehman, Milbank, Altschul, Barnard, Vagelos Alumnae Center and all administrative offices in the Quad and Elliott Hall. In addition, computer network service will be down in Plimpton Hall and wireless connectivity in Sulzberger and Elliott Hall will be unavailable. All other Residential buildings will be unaffected.

Please note that Remote Log-In will not function once power has been disconnected. Any PC left on in Milbank or Altschul will shut down when the power outage occurs and, in most cases, will have to be manually restarted when the power is restored.

Heat to all campus buildings will be off on 12/27 from 6am -- 10am and again on 12/28 from 6pm - 9pm. The rental emergency generator will permit the reactivation of our boilers and restoration of heat to all campus buildings during the thirty six (36) hour power shut down interval. It will take a few hours after boiler activation to bring the buildings heat to comfortable level. If you must be at work please dress accordingly.

Milbank Impact:

Portions of Milbank Hall will be without power on 12/27 from 6am -- 10 am and again on 12/28 from 6pm - 9pm; this will be mostly limited to corridor and room lighting in some offices. The Milbank Animal Lab will be without HVAC and corridor lighting for this period of time. The rental emergency generator will permit us to restore power to Milbank during the thirty six (36) hour power shut down interval.

Altschul Impact

On 12/26, all critical scientific equipment as identified by various departments will be connected to the building emergency generator system. On 12/27, electrical power to the building will be shut off (6 am). The building emergency generator will automatically turn on and energize connected critical equipment. Altschul Hall will be without electrical power to elevators, air handlers, exhaust fans, building and corridor lighting, fume hoods, etc. All electrically powered equipment and fixtures not tied in to either emergency generator will remain off until the conclusion of the shut down and restoration of building power on 12/28 at 9pm.

The 13th fl Animal Lab and built-in walk-in environmental chambers will be tied in to the rental emergency generator on 12/27 and reactivated at approximately 10am.

What you can do:

Please take appropriate steps to ensure that all affected equipment is turned off before you leave work on 12/21 and prior to the power shut down. Power is expected to be restored on Friday 12/27 at 9pm and all equipment may be reenergized at that time.

Should you have any questions or require further information or assistance with your equipment, please feel free to contact Daniel Davis at Facilities Services X42041. We appreciate your cooperation, patience and understanding.

Julio Vazquez, Director Office of Facilities Services 12/10/07

11/30/07

From: Help Desk

Subject: Phishing e-mail scam at Barnard

You may have received an email asking that you send your barnard.edu email/webmail password to support@barnard.edu. Refer to the text of the email below. This is a dangerous hoax. Do not respond to this email.

Barnard College will never ask you to send a password via email. No reputable organization or company will ask you to do this. If you received this e-mail, delete it immediately.

If you have already responded to this email, you have given your password to criminals. You must change your Barnard e-mail password immediately; you can do this in webmail at http://webmail.barnard.edu or via eBear. Please call the Barnard Help Desk (212-854-7172) if you need assistance. If you are using this same password for personal accounts (gmail, banking, shopping), change your password on those accounts as well.

As always, you can call the Help Desk if you have questions.

-------- Original Message ---------------------------------------

Subject: Confirm Your Email Address! Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 04:57:40 -0500 (EST)
From: THE BARNARD. EDU WEBMAIL TEAM <support@barnard.edu
Reply-To: gralley2007@yahoo.com.hk To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Confirm Your Email Address!

Dear barnard.edu Subscriber,

To complete and verify your barnard.edu account, you must reply to this email immediately and enter your password here (*********)

Failure to do this will immediately render your email address deactivated from our database.

You can also confirm your email address by logging into your barnard.edu account at http://webmail.barnard.edu/

Thank you for using BARNARD. EDU! THE BARNARD. EDU WEBMAIL TEAM

Additional notes

see how to change your email password at http://www.barnard.columbia.edu/at/Password.html

If you do not have an SSH client, you can download a copy of Putty here: http://www.columbia.edu/acis/software/putty/

11/05/07

The Facilities Department reminds the members of the Barnard Community that an electrical power shut down will take place on Election Day Tuesday, November 6th, from 9 to 11 am when the college is officially closed. This brief service curtailment is required to facilitate the Nexus construction presently underway on campus. During the power curtailment Altschul Hall will be without heat, elevators, supplemental AC units, air handlers, exhaust fans, building and corridor lighting, etc.

Critical equipment as identified by each department will be tied into the building's emergency generator and will remain operational.

Portions of Milbank Hall will also be without power; this is mostly limited to corridor and room lighting in some offices. The Animal Lab will be without HVAC and corridor lighting for the brief period of the shut down.

This shut down will also result in the loss of computer network service (e-mail, Internet, file sharing, administrative applications) in administration buildings including Lehman, Milbank, Altschul, Barnard, Vagelos Alumnae Center and all administrative offices in the Quad and Elliott Hall and Plimpton Hall. All other Residential buildings will be unaffected.

09/06/07

MINS has upgraded the BC email server. Pine users will see this message:

Welcome to Pine version 4.64!

Your Pine configuration file indicates that you may not have used this
version of Pine before. This version's significant changes are
documented in the Release Notes, which may be viewed by pressing "R" now
or while in the Main Menu.

To Exit this screen and continue your Pine session press "Return".

Pine is a trademark of the University of Washington.

This new version fixed a number of bugs. See the Release notes for details.

08/20/07

CUIT will perform a network upgrade on Wednesday, 8/22/07. This upgrade will disrupt network service for all servers in both data centers from
the hours of 2 AM to 6 AM on Wednesday morning.

During this window, we will be upgrading software on the data center routers. As we individually reload each router, servers connected to
each will be disrupted for approximately 15 minutes.

This outage will impact all network dependent services such as DNS, DHCP, email, web, administrative applications, etc.

Jim Soliven
CUIT Network Operations Center

08/14/07

The migration from Athena to Artemis has been completed. We are still configuring workstations for users who were not on campus this summer.
All 73 departments were moved to the new server.
1023 accounts were migrated.
New software clients were installed on 560 computers.
529 users have changed their passwords, using a more secure format.
A dozen new groups were created to allow users from different departments to share files. This has eliminated the need to email documents to collaborators. The result: the files are secure, the files are backed up daily, members of the group can easily see the current version of a document, email accounts are not clogged by sending new versions of documents as attachments, sensitive data can be shared on a secure server.

08/11/07

Columbia has announced that on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., there will be a campus wide network service interruption in order to perform necessary maintenance. Barnard College will be affected.

During this service interruption, access to all Barnard and Columbia campus network services will be unavailable both on and off campus. These include internet access, campus web pages, eBear, email, webmail, file storage on Artemis as well as all network applications including Datatel, Financial Aid, EMS and Health Services.

The Columbia announcement appears on their web site: http://www.columbia.edu/acis/announce/alerts.html Check there for updates.

Please call the Barnard Help Desk, 212.854.7172, if you have questions or concerns.

07/19/07

Barnard Network Downtime: MINS will be performing necessary work on the College's network infrastructure on Saturday, July 28, 2007. As a result, the network will be down for most of the day between 10am-6pm.

During this time, access to ALL campus network services will be unavailable. These include internet access, campus web pages, eBear, email, webmail, file storage (Athena/Artemis) as well as all network applications including Datatel, Financial Aid, EMS and Health Services.

MINS will be reconfiguring routers and switches so that the entire fate of the Barnard network will not reside solely in the Elliott server room. The relatively long time frame is necessary since staff will have to work in the data closets in several different buildings and make a number of trips between them. This improvement is one more step along the way to achieving full network redundancy for the College.

If you have any questions, please contact the Help Desk at x4-7172.

05/09/2007

Barnard Network Downtime on May 19th
On Saturday, May 19, 2007, from 10:00AM to 2:00PM, MINS will be performing necessary upgrades to the College's firewall. During this time, there will be no access to the Internet, e-mail, www/web, eBear, file sharing, MIS or departmental applications both on and off campus. To prevent potential loss of data, please be sure to logout of your computer by 9:00AM.

last update 02/20/08