May 2010 Archives

The departmental server was having trouble processing mail this afternoon. While I was working on the problem, some spam got through unfiltered and there were some temporary outages to outbound mail.

A fake system administration message with the subject "Math & Stats Webmail Alert" was sent to many Math & Stats accounts today; the text begins ...

Attn: Faculty/Staff/Students,

This message is from McMaster University Technology Service Desk to all
Faculty, Staff and Students of the Department of Mathematics & Statistics
using the Math & Stats Webmail accounts.

This is a phishing ploy - i.e. scammers are trying to trick you into emailing them your username and password. This is a cleverer ploy than usual in that it references the department name and UTS. But there are still several clues that this message came neither from the RHPCS sysadmins nor from UTS ...

I've updated the security certificate on the primary Math & Stats web server (www.math, mail.math, wiki.math, etc.). Some people will stop seeing warnings messages; most people should see no effect. But if you are asked about a new certificate, simply accept it.

One of our file servers is acting up and workstations are intermittently slowing down or temporarily freezing; accounts starting with a to l are most severely affected. Web and email access are affected to a lesser degree. I am working on the problem. I may have to reboot the problematic server later on this morning.

I believe that most workstations will start working again without having to reboot.