This is a reminder that no member of the Georgia Tech community should ever consider sending his or her GTAccount password to anyone via email, or even telling it to anyone on the telephone. OIT will never ask you for your password over email, the telephone, or anywhere else! You’re the only person who should ever know your password - other users certainly shouldn’t have it, and OIT system administrators don’t need it.

Some of you may be receiving emails with the subject line, “Update YOUR Gatech email NOW” containing poor grammar and a request for your personal and account information. These are fraud attempts which could compromise the security of Georgia Tech systems if they are answered. Please don’t reply to these emails - they appear to be an attempt to take over user email accounts, probably for spam purposes, and may not have been aimed at GT in specific, but any account compromise puts all of us at risk.

If you have mistaken this message for a legitimate one and accidentally given away your account information, you need to act immediately:

1) Go to passport.gatech.edu and change your password ASAP!

2) Contact OIT and let them know that this has happened, so that they can monitor your email account for signs of tampering.
Use the web form at: http://www.remedy.gatech.edu/cgi-bin/Service-Request/OIThome.pl
Or, call 4-7173

Please contact the LCC Support office if you have any questions or concerns!

thanks!

LCC Support

Many of the world’s recent technological developments were envisioned in fiction long before they became physically realized. This news blog chronicles science news in context of the Science Fiction that inspired new discoveries. Take a look at http://www.technovelgy.com/ to find out who thought of it first!

The GT Library is hosting a student Flash animation competition, supported by the Library’s Multimedia Studio! The Multimedia Studio is a wealth of resources that benefit students in developing media and incorporating rich media into their coursework and projects.

Competition details, including deadlines and prizes can be found at:

http://flashinthepan2007.blogspot.com

The GT Library is hosting a student Flash animation competition, supported by the Library’s Multimedia Studio! The Multimedia Studio is a wealth of resources that benefit students in developing media and incorporating rich media into their coursework and projects.

Competition details, including deadlines and prizes can be found at:

http://www.cetl.gatech.edu/tsquare/reg.php

CETL is running several classes on T-Square, including basic classes as well as sessions focused on more specific topics. If you’re wondering what the extent of T-Squares capabilities are, they can answer your questions and provide a place to suggest improvements.

T-Square is Georgia Tech’s implementation of the open-source project, Sakai, which we develop here on campus. We expect to be able to change and develop its feature set over time to better suit your needs as Faculty members. So if you have suggestions, questions, or ideas for how you’d like T-Square to function, the training classes are a great place to become more familiar with the current features and make suggestions for future ones.

There’s also the T-Square Remedy request form under the Support link at
https://t-square.gatech.edu/portal

The ticket form can be used to report a problem, request help with a course setup, or make feature requests.

Are you seeing spam emails giving you account login information for MP3 and game websites? We’ve just gotten word that a few of these are making their way through the GT email system. As usual, they contain a link that will send you to a webpage which tries to download a virus to your computer.

The virus in question is currently a “zero-day” threat, meaning that antivirus corporations like McAfee haven’t created an antidote or prevention definition yet. So please be careful not to click on links in unexpected emails, both at Georgia Tech and at home!

The virus-bearing greeting card spam is still a prominent threat; we’ve been seeing messages about this on the GT computer support staff mailing lists, and the problem is getting media coverage as well:

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/07/notsofriendly_greeting_cards_1.html

Virus greeting cards can appear to have been sent by real people, perhaps even someone you know. For the moment, the best way to handle any electronic greeting cards you may receive is to delete them without opening them.

The virus payload is delivered when a user clicks on one of the links in the greeting card, so if you have accidentally opened a suspicious card, it’s still safe to delete it, as long as you have not followed its links.

If you suspect you may have accidentally clicked through a suspicious link, please contact LCC Support immediately - this virus carries a payload that’s a serious threat to the security of your computer and the network.

Some of our department’s faculty have started seeing a ramp-up in E-Card spam messages. These have been around for a while, but the latest batch of Fourth-of-July-themed messages may have prompted more Internet users to click on the bogus cards and infect themselves with viruses, causing an increase in virus traffic.

Georgia Tech does run virus scans on all @lcc.gatech.edu emails, removing viral attachments before they get to your desk. However, some virus spam, like the E-Cards trick, tries to get you to click on links in the email (rather than get you to open attachments), which take you to websites that automatically try to use Internet Explorer security flaws to run code on your computer. It’s the website at the other end of the link that is the dangerous component in this attack.

LCC Support recommends using Firefox, which currently has fewer unpatched security flaws than Internet Explorer.

As always, please be careful not to click on links in emails that you are unsure about. Be doubly cautious when checking mail from providers other than Georgia Tech, including Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, and your home ISP. If you start noticing an increase in spam and virus emails, send a request in to the support system. We can help you minimize the spam and ensure that viruses don’t hit your PC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6065534.stm

Are lawmakers really trying to tax in-world transactions? Or do they simply want to level-up their orcs? We may never know.

According to various sources across the web, the vulnerability in Firefox announced by a pair of presenters at the ToorCon hacker convention is not very threatening. The presenters claimed to have code that would exploit the security flaw and install rootkits on the host machine. As it turns out, they were simply bragging.

Washington Post’s Security Blog

ZD Net article