blogs.swarthmore.edu

American University’s Center for Social Media has issued a new guide to using copyrighted materials in the classroom. The authoring of the guide involved over 150 educators and a review by experts in copyright law. Overall, the publication stresses the flexibility of the “fair use” provisions of copyright law which may allow for more legal use of copyrighted materials in teaching than many educators believe.

Read the Chronicle of Higher Education’s brief coverage.

Read the guide: The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education

Most everyone knows not to open executables (e.g., .exe, .bat, etc.) and documents (e.g., .doc, .xls, .ppt, .html, etc.) received via email when they’re not expected. However, did you know that Adobe Acrobat documents (.pdf) fall into the same category?? It’s quite straightforward for an attacker to invisibly modify a pdf document in such a way that it takes control of your PC when you open it. Unfortunately, anti-virus programs won’t always detect these malicious pdf documents accurately.

There are two ways to protect yourself:

1. Make sure you have the latest version of Adobe software (go to Help and click on Check for Updates). For example, the latest version of Adobe Acrobat, as of this posting, is 8.13.

2. Don’t receive, open, install, etc. any email attachments unless you’re expecting them.

The latest version of Adobe Acrobat was recently released and attackers are already exploiting out of date versions.

Stay safe,
Nick

Available at http://www.swarthmore.edu/its_summer08.xml

Contents

1. Internet Bandwidth, Increased from 60 Mb/s to 100 Mb/s
2. Media Services Equipment Loans
3. Computers in the Classrooms: next up are Hicks 211, Kohlberg 226 & 328, Trotter 301 & 303, SC 199
4. New Improved Office Computer Backups, Coming Soon
5. Media Center Now Open Sundays, 1 - 9 p.m.
6. New Software Versions
7. 16TB in New Storage
8. Dial-Up Services to be Discontinued 1/1/09
9. ITS Presentations
10. New ITS Email Subject Line Format

Did You Know?

Percentage of 2012 applicants who applied online: 89% (34% in 2003)

Number of students who brought desktop computers this fall
(instead of laptops): only 25!

Helpdesk service: percentage of calls closed the same day:
87% of student calls and
73% of faculty/staff calls

Number of alumni who have logged in to the Alumni Community website:
8,910

more numbers

If you’re a Windows user, did you ever wonder what the periodic appearance of a yellow shield on your task bar means? When you have Windows Automatic Update enabled (and you definitely should!), your PC will regularly check with Microsoft to see if any new software fixes or patches are available to download and install.

Generally, Microsoft releases patches for Windows systems on every second Tuesday of the month (affectionately known, by some, as “patch Tuesday”). Your PC should detect the availability of patches on patch Tuesday and download/install them to your computer. Oftentimes, your PC will need to be rebooted for the patches to take affect.

Malicious attackers also watch for patch Tuesday but their intent is to better understand where specific security holes in the Windows software exist. They reverse engineer the patches and can then generate attacks against unpatched Windows machines.

Yesterday, Microsoft released a critical patch so you may see the yellow shield even though it’s not the second Tuesday of the month. In order to stay safe, this critical patch should be installed as soon as possible and your machine restarted. Attackers are already working on efforts to exploit this most recent weakness so patching quickly is key.

So, don’t ignore or inhibit that little yellow shield on your task bar. It’s trying to protect your PC and data! Allow it to install the patches as soon as it detects them. And, if it prompts you to restart your PC, it’s a really good idea to do that.

Stay safe,
Nick

According to security experts and anti-virus software vendor F-Secure, a new malware attack is currently being spread via Facebook pages. The attacks are propagated by a malicious worm which steals victims Facebook information. Users receive a message from infected friends with links to a YouTube video. If Windows users click on the link to view the video, they are prompted to first download an updated version of Flash.

If the rogue Flash program is installed, the worm scans the newly infected users system for Facebook cookies and, in turn, sends new attack messages to the victims friend list.

Since the YouTube video link appears to originate from a friend, Facebook users are more willing to click on it.

Be careful!!

Taking advantage of the break, ITS will be performing maintenance work on network equipment and telephone servers. Some of this work will require interruptions in service. Below is a list of planned outages:

Wed, Noon - 1 PM:

There will be a 15-20 minute period when access to saved voicemail messages will be interrupted. New voicemail messages will continue to be accepted during this time.

Thur, 6 PM - Midnight:

Campus network and Internet access during this period will be interrupted 3-4 times for periods up to 20-30 minutes while we upgrade software and reconfigure network equipment. Telephone service will be interrupted for 10-15 minutes during two of these periods. Between 11 PM and Midnight, telephone service will again be interrupted as we upgrade software on the telephone switch servers.

The restart of the Beardsley core at 12:50 PM today did fix a number of problems including wireless access in the academic/administrative buildings. The wireless network should be working normally except for Guest Wireless which we expect to have operational shortly. Computers directly connected to a network jack were also fixed at that time. However, we have another residual problem with computers connected to a Cisco phone. In many cases, these computers are still not able to obtain network access. In those cases, a simple procedure will correct this problem. If your computer is connected to your phone you can correct the problem by performing the following steps:

Turn your Cisco phone over. If there is only one cable attached to the phone and your computer is not working, e-mail the help desk as this procedure will not solve the problem.

If you see two cables attached to the phone, pull one cable out of the jack on the phone and re-insert it. Then pull the other cable out and re-insert it. Please do this one cable at a time so that you insure that the cables go back into the same jack that they came from.

This will momentarily disrupt power to your phone causing it to restart. You will see some activity on the phone screen and within 5 minutes your normal line appearances will appear.

Once that has happened, bring up a network application such as a web browser and verify that your computer is now connected to the network. If it still is not connected, restart your computer.

ITS staff have tested this method in a number of buildings and it has solved all the remaining network problems for those individuals. If you are are still having problems, do e-mail the ITS help desk. In the morning, we will have additional staff from TransNet to assist individuals with performing the above procedure or resolving any other network access problems.

Please do share this e-mail with your officemates who don’t currently have network access.

We appreciate your patience with the disruptions this has caused today. Up to now, we have been focused on resolving the problem but will now turn our attention to an analysis of what may have set this chain of events off at approximately Midnight last night.

--

On a regular basis, the Swarthmore community receives emails from malicious individuals requesting their passwords and sometimes other personally sensitive information.

These emails are often cleverly disguised to look like they originated from an official source such as ITS. These attacks on the community are known as “phishing”.
{For more info, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing}

Unfortunately, when community members respond to these bogus password requests, it results in their email accounts being used (almost instantaneously) to send massive quantities of spam to the Internet.
{See a blog entry from this summer: Email, Spam & Undeliverable Messages }

Further, this can result in Internet Service Providers (ISPs such as AOL, Yahoo, GMail, Comcast, etc.) blocking legitimate email originating from Swarthmore.

PLEASE remember that ITS will never ask for your password, including by email!! You should promptly discard any emails, regardless of the source, requesting your password or other personally sensitive data.

You can help keep yourself safe and email available to everyone else in the community.

ITS tested Google Chrome on several of our swat online services, and found that many swat services function properly. Chrome is packed with many features that are easy to use including navigation and search history. If you are interested in road testing Google Chrome, feel free to download it; but keep in mind, Chrome is still in beta, and is not as mature as your current College supported browsers (Internet Explorer, Safari, and Firefox).

EUDORA MIGRATION CONTINUES

During the summer over 170 faculty and staff members have transitioned from Eudora to another email client. Thunderbird is the most popular email client selected. Beginning in October, ITS will be scheduling a time to migrate current Eudora users.

We understand that changing e-mail software can be inconvenient so please consider the following options: you can switch to another e-mail program (apple mail or outlook), or you can follow our recommendation to migrate to Thunderbird. We are happy to assist you with the process now or when it is convenient for you during the next few months.
To facilitate the transition, ITS is doing the following:

Individual or Departmental Installation Appointments - ITS is scheduling appointments.Depending on the amount of email that needs to be migrated a migration can take 1 to 4 hours. Please call the Help Desk for an appointment at ext. 4357 or send an email to jacobsen@swarthmore.edu to schedule a group or departmental migration.

Thunderbird Overview sessions for Mac and PC users. Join ITS to learn about Swarthmore’s new email system, Thunderbird. Thunderbird Overview sessions is designed to prepare faculty and staff for the migration from Eudora. We’re finding that most users like Thunderbird more than Eudora, but it is a change and, like any change, does take a little time to get settled. Please attend our Overview session to learn about the differences, a few Thunderbird tips and tricks, and how to manage your mailbox. Thunderbird Overview Session dates and registration. Overview sessions are available for Mac and PC users.

What to learn more about the email project, see the ITS Blog postings.