All queued email has been delivered at this time. Thank you for your patience. If you need additional email assistance, please contact the Technology Services Helpdesk at 828-2227.

Posted by Connie Lowery at 9:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CAUTION: DO NOT OPEN EMAIL OR ATTACHMENTS CLAIMING TO BE SOPHOS ANTIVIRUS UPDATES.

Sophos Antivirus never distributes updates by email, and all Sophos Antivirus clients provided by VCU are configured to update themselves automatically when connected to the internet.

Email messages claiming to be Sophos Antivirus updates have begun circulating around the internet, according to Sophos. The emails contain an executable attachment that will infect computers with a virus. Current samples of the scam have the subject "Update your SOPHOS IDE scanner" and contain an attachment named "SOPHOS IDE scanner.rar".

The text and filenames could change, however. Do not trust any email claiming to provide updates to a Sophos product.

Posted by Greg Pendergast at 12:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Network Services will be performing equipment maintenance on Sunday, June 28, between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. This maintenance will cause a momentary disruption to Internet traffic during the maintenance window between the VCU network and the Internet outside VCU. Traffic inside the VCU network will not be affected. Please contact the VCU Help Desk (828-2227, help@vcu.edu) with any questions.

NOTE: Don't be a phishing victim - VCU and other reputable organizations will never use email to request that you reply with your password, social security number or confidential personal information. For more details visit http://infosecurity.vcu.edu/phishing.html.

Follow Technology Services at:
http://www.ts.vcu.edu
http://www.twitter.com/vcutechservices
http://www.yammer.com

Posted by Sam Kennedy at 8:25 AM | Permalink

All queued email has now been delivered. Users who received delivery failures may choose the option to resend. Access via VCU Mail Anywhere is available on all servers at this time.

Posted by Connie Lowery at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Email is currently being delivered to recipients. The queues will be cleared shortly.

Posted by Connie Lowery at 6:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Maintenance on the Banner system has been scheduled for Friday, June 19th, beginning at 6 p.m. During this two hour maintenance window BannerForms INB and eServices, including Banner Self Services, will be unavailable. Please contact the VCU Help Desk (828-2227, help@vcu.edu)with any questions or should you have problems accessing these services after the maintenance window.

NOTE: Don't be a phishing victim - VCU and other reputable organizations will never use email to request that you reply with your password, social security number or confidential personal information. For more details visit http://infosecurity.vcu.edu/phishing.html.

Follow Technology Services at:
http://www.ts.vcu.edu
http://www.twitter.com/vcutechservices
http://www.yammer.com

Posted by Sam Kennedy at 11:43 PM | Permalink

IT staff have discovered an email phishing scam which asks the recipient to reply with their username, password, data of birth and country/territory. Like many phishing scams, it takes advantage of the recipient's fear and presents a sense of urgency.

The email has a subject of "YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT MAY BE DELETED IN TWO DAYS (VERY URGENT)". Not only does it ask for your password to be sent (you should never share your password with anyone), it asks for it to be sent to an email address hosted on gmail.com.

Many of the emails were sent from the email account of a VCU staff member. Even if an email requesting your password or confidential information is sent from a VCU email address, do not share it! It's likely that the sender's email address was spoofed or that the sender's email account has been compromised and is under the control of a spammer or phisher. It's as trivial for someone to spoof a sender email address as it is for someone to put a fake return address on an envelope and mail it.

If confidential information is requested and your uncertain whether the request is legitimate or whether you should share the information being requested, ask your supervisor and contact the sender via phone (but do not call a phone number in the email since it could be the phisher's phone number).

The email states that unused email accounts are being deleted and that you need to respond if you are still using your account.

Phishing scams often take advantage of the recipient's fear or greed and this one is no exception.

VCU's Technology Services staff and other VCU business units will never ask you to email your password. Per VCU's Password Standard:

Passwords must be kept secret and must not be shared.

and

Passwords must not be inserted into email messages or other forms of electronic communication...

If you receive this email, or one like it, please delete it and do not respond to it. If you accidentally respond, change your password immediately and contact the VCU Help Desk to notify them that your password may have been compromised.

To learn more about how phishing works, what phishers might ask for, how they'll try to get you to share info., signs of a potential attack and how to protect yourself, visit our Phishing page.

For additional information security news, tips and more, view our Twitter page via the Web or your handheld device.

Posted by Steve Werby at 12:12 PM | Permalink

Student email server VRAM12 is restarting. Students may connect to their alternate server, vramimap12c.vcu.edu via IMAP or automatically via VCU Mail Anywhere.

Posted by Joe Lichtenstein at 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Scheduled maintenance will be performed on the E-mail system Saturday, June 20, between 7:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. During this maintenance window, access to e-mail may be unavailable on your primary server. Access to your e-mail via your alternate server should be available automatically when accessing through VCU Mail Anywhere, or via your alternate server using an IMAP connection or the Notes client.

Posted by James Pociluyko at 5:42 AM | Permalink

Blackboard Regularly Scheduled Maintenance Completed (Friday, June 12) at 06:30pm.

Please email blackboard@vcu.edu or call the Help Desk at 828-2227 if you experience any problems.

Regards,
Blackboard Team

Posted by Eric Harvey at 6:54 PM | Permalink

On Sunday, June 14th, 2009, from 10:00 to approximately 10:30 a.m., Microsoft patches will be applied to the ImageNow servers. ImageNow will be unavailable during this scheduled maintenance window.

Posted by Eric Doersch at 3:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Several widely-used vendors have released CRITICAL security updates to their products this week. Some of these flaws are being actively exploited across the internet. Updates for the affected products should be tested and applied as soon as possible.

Affected Products Overview:
Microsoft: Windows, Internet Explorer, IIS, Office, Works
https://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms09-jun.mspx

Apple: Mac OS X Server 10.4, Mac OS X 10.4, Product Security, Mac OS X Server 10.5, Mac OS X 10.5, AirPort, Apple TV, iPhone, iPhoto, iPod touch, QuickTime 7, Safari
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222

Adobe: Acrobat and Reader
http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb09-07.html

Posted by Greg Pendergast at 2:06 PM | Permalink

Aspen4 is currently restarting. Users may connect to their alternate server, Oak4, via the Notes client or IMAP at oak4.vcu.edu, or by changing their url string to oak4.vcu.edu/usermail#/mailfile.nsf via a web browser. The server will be available shortly.

Posted by Joe Lichtenstein at 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

COMPLETE - Server maintenance will occur on all LANDesk servers between 5 am and 8am on Friday, June 12. All services should be restored by 8am.

Posted by Mary Young at 3:34 PM | Permalink

Blackboard Maintenance - Friday, June 12, 2009 - 4:00pm to midnight.

Blackboard Maintenance is the second and fourth Friday of the month.

If unforeseen circumstances cause the system to be down past midnight updates will be posted to the Blackboard system announcement blog at:
http://blog.vcu.edu/blackboard/

Regards,
The Blackboard Team

For further assistance contact:
Technology Services Help Desk Contact Information

Phone: 828-2227
Email: blackboard@vcu.edu
Help ticket: http://www.ts.vcu.edu/helpdesk/
Bb Knowledge Base: www.ts.vcu.edu/db/blackboard.html
(previous Bb FAQs: http://faq.vcu.edu/ts/)

Posted by Jana Avery at 10:51 AM | Permalink

Web Services will be working on a storage update for the main web server which includes the VCU homepage. During this update from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. on Friday, June 5, there will be a period during a system reboot where the main VCU website will not be available for a short period of time.

Please contact the VCU Help Desk (828-2227, help@vcu.edu) with any questions.

NOTE: Don't be a phishing victim - VCU and other reputable organizations will never use email to request that you reply with your password, social security number or confidential personal information. For more details visit http://infosecurity.vcu.edu/phishing.html.

Follow Technology Services at:
http://www.ts.vcu.edu
http://www.twitter.com/vcutechservices
http://www.yammer.com

Posted by Sam Kennedy at 4:01 PM | Permalink

IT staff have discovered an email phishing scam with a subject containing "private photos on Tagged". Like many phishing scams, it makes the receiver believe it came from someone they know and invites them to view photos.

If you receive this email, or one like it, please delete it and do not respond to it.

To learn more about how phishing works, what phishers might ask for, how they'll try to get you to share info., signs of a potential attack and how to protect yourself, visit our Phishing page.

For additional information security news, tips and more, view our Twitter page via the Web or your handheld device.

Posted by Connie Lowery at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Regularly scheduled maintenance will be cancelled on the E-mail system for Saturday, June 6, 2009.

Posted by James Pociluyko at 5:41 AM | Permalink

Email Services is aware on an issue experienced with users who have Internet Explorer 8 as their default browser and attempt to launch a url link from Lotus Notes 8.5, Outlook, or Firefox. Sophos support is investigating this issue. Temporary workarounds including launching IE 8 and leaving open, clicking the url again, or changing the default browser from IE8. For additional assistance contact the Help Desk at 828-2227.

Posted by Connie Lowery at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Due to a number of responses to phishing attacks over the weekend, the university email domain "vcu.edu" is currently being blacklisted by hotmail.com, live.com, and msn.com. VCU Computer Center staff have contacted these domains to request VCU's domain be whitelisted as soon as possible.

VCU Technology staff will never ask for personal information or passwords via email. If you have any questions about the authenticity of any email you receive, please do not hesitate to contact Doctor Notes at dnotes@vcu.edu or the Technology Services Help Desk at 828-2227.

Posted by Connie Lowery at 9:07 PM | Permalink

Aspen is currently restarting. Users may connect to their alternate server, Oak, via the Notes client or IMAP at oak.vcu.edu, or by changing their url string to oak.vcu.edu/usermail#/mailfile.nsf via a web browser. The server will be available shortly.

Posted by Connie Lowery at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

IT staff have discovered an email phishing scam which ask the recipient to reply with their username, password, data of birth and country/territory. Like many phishing scams, it takes advantage of the recipient's fear and presents a sense of urgency.

The email has a subject of "YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT MAY BE DELETED IN TWO DAYS (VERY URGENT)". Not only does it ask for your password to be sent (you should never share your password with anyone), it asks for it to be sent to an email address hosted on gmail.com.

The email states that unused email accounts are being deleted and that you need to respond if you are still using your account.

Phishing scams often take advantage of the recipient's fear or greed and this one is no exception.

VCU's Technology Services staff and other VCU business units will never ask you to email your password. Per VCU's Password Standard:

Passwords must be kept secret and must not be shared.

and

Passwords must not be inserted into email messages or other forms of electronic communication...

If you receive this email, or one like it, please delete it and do not respond to it. If you accidentally respond, change your password immediately and contact the VCU Help Desk to notify them that your password may have been compromised.

To learn more about how phishing works, what phishers might ask for, how they'll try to get you to share info., signs of a potential attack and how to protect yourself, visit our Phishing page.

For additional information security news, tips and more, view our Twitter page via the Web or your handheld device.

Posted by Steve Werby at 8:38 AM | Permalink

Student email server VRAM10 is restarting. Students may connect to their alternate server, vramimap10c.vcu.edu via IMAP or automatically via VCU Mail Anywhere.

Posted by Joe Lichtenstein at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)