News - Jan 2004

Jan 30 2004 - mailserv will be down for maintenance between 11:30 PM Friday January 30 2004 and 2:30 AM Saturday January 31. Users of Webmail and Eudora who have their mailbox located on mailserv will not be able to access their mail between these times. Mail directed to people on mailserv should be queued so none will get lost.

Jan 27 2004 - Police are investigating the off-campus robbery/aggravated vehicular hijacking of a medical center employee at 6:40 p.m. Monday, Jan. 26 in the 1800 block of West Washburne. The incident occurred as the victim prepared to enter her parked vehicle. The offender approached from behind and threatened the victim by claiming to have a gun prior to taking the victim's personal property and car.

Anyone with information is asked to call Chicago Police Area 4 detectives at (312) 746-8253. The emergency number for UIC Police is 996-HELP (4357).

UIC Police remind members of the community of some safety tips:
--be aware of your surroundings
--try to travel in pairs or groups after dark
--use well-lit walkways
--on campus, look for the location of the nearest emergency call box (there are more than 700 across campus)

Jan 27 2004 - There is a new Windows worm out. Update your SAV virus definitions immediately. (If you haven't installed Symantec AntiVirus yet, do it now; see AntiVirus Software. It's free and any member of the UIC community can install it on all of their computers -- on campus or off.)

To view more info on this worm visit:

http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.novarg.a@mm.html

W32.Novarg.A@mm

W32.Novarg.A@mm is a mass-mailing worm that arrives as an attachment with the file extension .bat, .cmd, .exe, .pif, .scr, or .zip. When a computer is infected, the worm will set up a backdoor into the system by opening TCP ports 3127 thru 3198. This can potentially allow an attacker to connect to the computer and use it as a proxy to gain access to its network resources. In addition, the backdoor has the ability to download and execute arbitrary files.

The worm will perform a denial of service attack starting on February 1, 2004. It also has a trigger date to stop spreading on February 12, 2004.

Symantec does NOT have a removal tool for this worm. For removal instructions visit: http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.novarg.a@mm.html#removalinstructions

Jan 21 2004 - Same problem as yesterday - not enough RAM and swap. We are working as fast as we can to ready a new larger server. Thank you for your patience - we regret associated inconveniences.

Jan 20 2004 - The server was down from 1:15pm until about 2:00pm. We are aware of the cause of the problem and are taking steps to prevent future occurences. We regret any inconveniences caused.

Jan 17 2004 - We postponed the upgrade to give us time to test contingency plans. The upgrade will be re-scheduled in a week or so. Tigger will be available, as usual, over Jan 17-19.

Jan 17 2004 -

Tigger will be down (including for email) starting Saturday January 17 at 8:00AM until Sunday January 18 at 4:00PM to upgrade its operating system level to AIX 5.2. We may finish what should be a 6-hour job more quickly than that, but with this type of work, anything that can go wrong usually does, so we are reserving some extra time.

This weekend was selected due to the university holiday on Monday. An earlier attempt to make this upgrade during Winter Break ran into trouble, or else we would have done this before classes started.

Jan 15 2004 - Today, Thursday, January 15 ADSM and the dsmc command on the ACCC UNIX workstations will be 5:00PM due to upgrades in progress on its server. All backed up files will be available for restore after that time.

Jan 15 2004 - As has been previously announced, the borg machine is being decommissioned. Users are no longer permitted to login. Access is still available via ftp and will remain so until February 15, 2004. It is the sole responsibility of borg users to download their files before the machine is turned off on Febuary 15th.

Jan 02 2004 - On Friday evening just before 7 p.m., four subjects wearing masks and armed with handguns entered the 7-Eleven store at 1350 S. Halsted St. and robbed it of cash and consumer items. No one was injured and the subjects fled the area.

The offenders were described as male blacks wearing masks. One offender wore a white ski mask and was 6 feet-2 inches in height. The other offenders wore black ski masks and were 5 feet-6 inches to 5 feet-8 inches in height.

Their vehicle was a burgundy Cadillac four-door with gold trim and clean rims.

Anyone with information is urged to call UIC Police at (312) 996-2830.