Another Email Phishing Attack on NCSU Addresses

Please share this message with everyone in your offices. Several of you have contacted our office about a phishing attack today. Here is the official post from the central campus IT group on this issue:

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) is investigating a phishing attack targeting campus email users. The message appeared to come from the email address 'ncsuweb@webmaster.com'

As a reminder, the password on your account should be known only to you. OIT will never ask you to send your password to us via email, therefore any email like the one you may have received today should be considered suspect and you should not reply to it.

An excerpt of the text of the message is below:

Dear NCSU Account User,

We have noticed an unauthorized attempt to change your North Carolina State University Account password from a foreign IP. This was going to result to your inability to access your account due to the password change.

We are about to terminate your account but If you know you are the authorized owner of this account, kindly reply by providing your original

Unity ID (*******) Password (*******)

so as to protect your ID and password from unauthorized access.

Failure to do this will violate North Carolina State University's email terms & conditions.

From North Carolina State University Admin and Web Support

© 2009, North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC 27695

Information presented here is provided as a general information resource. Any mention of commercial products is for information only; it does not imply recommendation, endorsement nor support by Extension IT.

NCCE Newsletter Templates

Here is a template to use for your newsletters that follow the NCCE style guide in MS Word 2003/2004 format. If you have any questions or need help, please contact your Information Management Agent.

Newsletters: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/admin/wiki/index.php/File:Newsletter.doc

These are on the NCCE Intranet and there only accessible to NCCE faculty and staff.

Thoughts on using the eXtension "Ask an Expert" widget

By: John Dorner, Information Management Agent

Good news - the eXtension Ask an Expert widget now has the ability to follow up questions. If a question has been answered a followup answer can be sent. One way this is useful is if you find some relevant information soon after you've answered a question.

http://about.extension.org/2009/10/14/ask-an-expert-gets-question-follow-up/

While I'm writing about the Ask an Expert widget, I thought I'd share some ideas and observations.

Check your AaE preferences

If you have a widget on your site, please make sure there is at least one person assigned to automatically answer questions from the widget.

If you are willing to answer questions that come in from the AaE widgets or the eXtension web site, please indicate your areas of expertise. Keep in mind that "areas of expertise" is not the same as "area of responsibility". Lots of us are responsible for subject matter areas for which we are not "experts". As a question wranglers, when I'm looking to see who to assign a question, I have my doubts about people who indicate they are experts in 100 different fields. On the other end of the spectrum are the people with no areas of expertise. I realize that not all areas are represented, but try to find one or two that are real close to your area of expertise.

Assign the question to the right person

If you don't have the answer, and are assigned a question, re-assign it to the best person to answer the question.

Make sure the people who are auto-assigned questions from your widget are checking their mail and able to answer or reassign questions within a day. If not, then consider having just a few people who can/will auto-assigned questions.

Make informal agreements with the agents in the surrounding counties to take questions when the agent in your county is busy, out of the office or just have a vacant position. Keep in touch with them so you know when they are available and able to answer a question in a timely manner.

If you have someone in your office who leaves or retires it is important to have them taken out of the Ask The Expert system. Retirees are encouraged to answer questions if they wish but it is not obligatory. To be removed from the eXtension environment email eXtensionHelp@eXtension.org to let them know you are retiring or leaving and they will be happy to update your eXtension account.

Participate

Please try to respond to questions within 48 hours, research has shown that if the person does not receive a response with in 48 hours they will go else where for the information and will probably not use the tool again. If you have to go on leave remind someone in the office to check the questions, it is ok to respond back to a question with the request to call the office for more details or to tell them a specific person is out of the office.

Unless you are doing a great job of marketing the Ask an Expert widget, chances are you will not be overwhelmed with questions. Most will only take a minute or two to answer. Much less than if the person walked into your office and asked the question.

Keep in mind that marketing the widget and your website in general is not a one shot deal. It is a continuous process. Everyone knows Pepsi, but they spend lots of money on advertising every day. The same needs to apply to Extension and what we have to offer. The Ask an Expert is just one of the products we offer.

Soon, your participation will be measured and automatically included in your performance appraisal tool. This is just one indication of the level of importance that administration puts on participating in eXtension and the Ask an Expert is just one simple way to participate.

Questions?

If you have any questions or need help, please contact one of the Information Management Agents.

Information presented here is provided as a general information resource. Any mention of commercial products is for information only; it does not imply recommendation, endorsement nor support by Extension IT.

NCSU Elluminate Live upgraded

Over the weekend (10/10/2009) NCSU DELTA upgraded the version of Elluminate Live! installed and used by NCSU. There are several improvements and bug fixes.

A new and more powerful Elluminate Live Manager (session scheduler)

• A recover/reset your password button
• A search box to find sessions easier (not working at this moment)
• A new "create session" window that is reorganized
• You can search for participants/moderators by name rather than just by unity ID
• Invite guests from the create session window
• The ability to delete your preloaded whiteboard file
• Use of Elluminate Plan!
  

• View a tutorial of the new ELM at http://delta.ncsu.edu/docs/learn/courses/teaching/elluminate/elluminate_session/

• View a handout of the new ELM at http://delta.ncsu.edu/docs/learn/courses/teaching/elluminate/elluminate_live_meeting_creation.pdf

A new way to log in to an Elluminate session after clicking on the session URL

• Moderators will click on "User Authentication -> Elluminate Live! Manager User" and enter your Elluminate username and password if prompted. Also, if prompted enter the meeting password.

• Participants will click on "User Authentication -> Guest" then type in their email address and name. If there is a password for the meeting, they need to enter it here as well. Participants cannot user their Unity ID and password to join a session.

We recommend making your participants aware of the new login screen they will see.

The first time you join a session with the new version it will take a few minutes longer because the new software is being downloaded. When it starts, the first thing you'll notice are the new icons and the polling buttons (green check and red "X") have been moved off the toolbar to the participant box. But those seem to be the biggest changes I've noticed for the participant and moderator.

This upgrade also included changes to

• provide a more robust web server to reduce the number of incidents of the main Elluminate page not working
• provide a more robust and flexible database which will allow DELTA to more easily maintain the server and provide more detailed statistics to users on their meetings

Information presented here is provided as a general information resource. Any mention of commercial products is for information only; it does not imply recommendation, endorsement nor support by Extension IT.

NCSU Utility Bar For Your Blog

By John Dorner

In the September 30, 2009 memo from Dean Wynne, he referenced the NCSU Brand Book at: www.ncsu.edu/brand and stated that "University Web pages are required to add a branding bar at the top." If you have a blog on Blogger you can add the utility bar (branding bar) at the top of your blog by following these steps:

Get the code for the bar

Go to: www.ncsu.edu/brand/utility-bar/iframe/config/ an complete the form indicating the site URL where the bar is to be placed, the color of the bar and whether or not you want it centered.

Copy the code generated to your clipboard ([Command]+C on Mac or [Ctrl]+C on Windows).

Edit the Blogger Template

Go to the Layout tab of the Settings for your blog and click "Edit HTML".

Download Full Template (as a precaution in case something doesn't work as planned) and save it on your computer.

Scroll down through the code for your template until you find the "" tag.

Paste ([Command]+V on Mac or [Ctrl]+V on Windows) the code for the utility bar a new line just below the "" tag.

Change any occurrences of the ampersand (&) character with "&" so it looks something like:

<body>

<link href='http://www.ncsu.edu/brand/utility-bar/iframe/css/utility_bar_iframe.css' media='screen' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'/>
<iframe frameborder='0' id='ncsu_branding_bar' name='ncsu_branding_bar' scrolling='no' src='http://www.ncsu.edu/brand/utility-bar/iframe/index.php?color=red&amp;inurl=nccetechtalk.blogspot.com&amp;center=yes'>
Your browser does not support inline frames or
is currently configured not to display inline frames.<br/>
Visit <a href='http://ncsu.edu/'>http://www.ncsu.edu</a>.
</iframe>

Click "Preview" to see your blog without saving the template. Once you are satisfied everything is presented the way you like it, click the "Save" button and you are done.

To reiterate what Dean Wynne, "NC State can't build a strong brand without the help of everyone communicating on behalf of the university. We need all CALS employees to become brand champions or NC State."

If you need help implementing the NCSU Utility Bar on any of your sites (other than on the county Extension web sites) feel free to contact me.

Information presented here is provided as a general information resource. Any mention of commercial products is for information only; it does not imply recommendation, endorsement nor support by Extension IT.

E-Mail Problems

Recently, I've noticed several people with "over quota" problems, so I figured I'd post this reminder with some tips about managing your email. Some of these tips are specific to NCSU IMAP mail users, some are specific to Thunderbird users (the mail client that EIT supports) and some are appropriate to anyone.

Stop using email for all communications
Email is not always the best tool to use for communications. Consider moving some of what you are doing via email to a better tool. Some of these include:

• Google Docs or Zoho for sharing and collaborating on documents, spreadsheets and presentations
  
• Slideshare.net for sharing presentations
• drop.io or dropbox.com for filesharing
  
• Delicious.com for sharing websites that you find interesting
• Feed readers (i.e. Google Reader and many others) for 'newsletters' if offered.
• Instant Messaging for quick questions/answers/short discussions
• Twitter, Facebook and blogs for keeping others informed about projects, your life, etc.
• Flickr, Picasa, Snapfish, Facebook, etc. for sharing photos
  

I can think of very few good reasons to put an attachment in an email message.

Maximize your quota
First thing to do is to make sure you have all the quota you are entitled to.
From Thunderbird, go to Edit -> Folder Properties and click on the "Quota" tab. This will tell you how much of your quota you are using and how much quota you have available. If you have less than 200MB (200,000KB), then you will want to request more by going to: http://sysnews.ncsu.edu/. After you have logged in, the "User Info" section has your ITD Account Quotas listed. Click on "Quota Manager" to make any changes. If you are not using the AFS space or Novell space, you can max your email quota at 200MB for free. If you need more than that, you can purchase more by going to: https://sysnews.ncsu.edu/tools-bin/usmdb-purchase.

Empty Spam folder
You probably need to do this fairly regularly (every week or two). You can select all the messages in the Spam folder (click on the "+" sign to the left of Inbox in Thunderbird to see your folders) and delete them. An easier and often faster way to do this is to login to Webmail (http://webmail.ncsu.edu/) and click on "Purge" to the right of your Spam folder.

Have your trash emptied automatically
From the Tools -> Account Settings window select Server Settings and check the "Empty Trash on Exit" and the "Cleanup ('Expunge') Inbox on Exit" options. This makes Thunderbird work like an efficient cleaning service that empties your trash at the end of the day (or whenever you quit Thunderbird).

Delete or move the biggest messages
Rather than wasting your time deleting thousands of 4KB messages, you can free up the most space by moving/deleting just the few really large messages. To find which folder is using the most space, go to: IMAP space used by folders (https://sysnews.ncsu.edu/tools-bin/imap-usagequery). This page gives a report of how much each folder is using. Spend your time cleaning up the largest folder.

From within a folder (in Thunderbird) sort your messages by "Size" to get the largest messages together. Chances are real good that all of these messages have some large attachments.

Move messages to local folders
All messages in your unity mail Inbox and the folders that are sub-folders of your unity mail Inbox count towards your quota. Messages that are in your "Local Folders" do NOT count towards your quota. Move any folders/messages that you don't need access to from other computers or webmail to your Local Folders. The space for these is only limited by your computer's hard drive capacity.

References

Cleaning Up Your Mail When You Are Close To Quota

Changing Your ITD Account Quotas How to allocate more space to e-mail

IMAP Quota Check Find out how your e-mail quota is being allocated

For future reference, you can find these links on the NCCE Intranet -> IT Resources -> Email

Information presented here is provided as a general information resource. Any mention of commercial products is for information only; it does not imply recommendation, endorsement nor support by Extension IT.

Wireless Networking in the County Offices

Many of our county offices have wireless networks installed and managed by NCCE EIT. A list of them is on the intranet at: http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/admin/wiki/index.php/Counties_with_EIT_Wireless

Anyone with a unity ID can connect to these wireless networks.

To connect to the internet, make sure your wireless network is connected to the Extension network.

Open a browser and go to any web page. You should be redirected to a login screen prompting you for your Unity Login and Password. After logging in, you should be able to use the internet with no problems.

Note: your unity ID & password are not stored, so if you go to another web page that requires authentication, you will have to log in again. This is useful as you can use your login and password to get a guest online (you are responsible for their actions) without them being able to access sites that need authentication.

Problems for computers with Trend Micro Antivirus

For computers that have Trend Micro Antivirus installed, this automatic process does not work. Trend Micro Antivirus sees redirects from unsigned pages (like our wireless authentication) as a threat and does not allow it. The workaround for this issue at this time is to go to: http://192.168.1.1. this will take you to the login screen. After you log in, you will get a "page not found" error. That's okay. You are now authenticated and can browse the internet by using your Home button, bookmarks or typing a URL into the location panel.

Information presented here is provided as a general information resource. Any mention of commercial products is for information only; it does not imply recommendation, endorsement nor support by Extension IT.