Important Reminder from ITS Client Services

In January there was an incident involving two highly inappropriate mass emails sent out under the signature of a university employee. An investigation of this incident suggested that the two emails were generated by someone who had gained access to the employee's account.

Further investigation showed that the machine was compromised over the summer by the Windows RPC exploit. Although the appropriate Windows updates were applied to the PC, programs had been placed on the PC prior to the application of the patches. These programs remained dormant until last weekend.

The purpose of this alert is to serve as a reminder to all of us to question any unusual activity we might identify on our PCs.

THINGS YOU CAN DO TO BE VIGILANT:

• Beware of emails without a subject line or emails from strangers (both may carry viruses)
• Notice any degradation in the performance of your PC (may indicate it has been compromised)
• Pay attention to system or Norton Antivirus warning messages.

THINGS YOU CAN DO TO BE PROACTIVE:

• Shut down and power off your desktop PC when you leave the office at the end of the day. (Hackers often work during off hours since the likelihood of the intrusion going unnoticed is greatest at that time.)
• Verify that you have the Norton Antivirus managed client installed on your office PC.
• Scan your computer for viruses periodically.
• Make sure that critical updates have been installed on Windows (particularly if you are running Windows 2000 or Windows XP).

Information on how to do any of these suggestions can be found below.

If you have any questions or find problems as a result of trying the above suggestions, please contact the ITS Help Desk at 442-3700.

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HOW TO:

VERIFY YOU HAVE THE NORTON ANTIVIRUS MANAGED CLIENT

On the task bar you will see a yellow shield; click on it and you will see a pop up box entitled Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition. You have a managed client if, under General Information, the name of a Parent Server is listed. While the box is open, check to see that the date of the virus definition files is recent (within the last 2 weeks).

If you don't have the managed client installed or the date is not recent, we suggest calling the ITS Help Desk or your Technology Coordinator.

SCAN YOUR COMPUTER FOR VIRUSES

From the Norton Antivirus Corporate Edition popup click on the Scan Computer function and select Local Disk files to scan. This scan will take about 20 minutes.

INSTALL CRITICAL WINDOWS UPDATES

If you are using Windows 2000 or Windows XP on your PC, invoke MS Internet Explorer, click on Tools and then Windows Update. This will connect you to the MS Windows Update site. Follow the prompts and the Windows Update service will then tell you what updates are needed for your PC. You can review the updates needed and continue to install any critical updates yourself. The time for this to happen will vary depending upon the type and number of updates needed.

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