News - Feb 2005

Feb 21 2005 - The ACCC is going to replace WebMail with completely new software, faster, easier, and better than sliced bread. We found two different Web email programs that we liked pretty much equally, Squirrel and Horde IMP. They both do most everything a good Web email client should do, but each does some things better than the other.

We only have the resources to support one WebMail, so you get to choose -- we're having an election.

Feb 18 2005 - Tigger will be down tonight, Friday February 18, from 10:00PM to 12:00 Midnight, to apply patches from IBM for last Friday's system crash.

Feb 09 2005 - We are having problems with email delivery to tigger. Unfortunately, the email delivery is causing tigger, itself, to crash. This makes troubleshooting more difficult. Incoming mail is being queued, and will be delivered when we've fixed the problem. But we don't have enough details at this time to estimate when email will be fully functional.

Feb 04 2005 - Eudora 6.2.1 for Windows and Mac OS X is now available for download from E-Sales. If you have problems/questions please email software@uic.edu with a detailed description of the problem. The email should include any error messages received and the name of the OS you are running.

It is a good idea to upgrade because this upgrade fixes a recently found security flaw with previous releases of version 6 of Eudora.

Feb 01 2005 -

New Security Flaws in Microsofts Internet Explorer Prompt the ACCC to Recommend Use of Mozilla Firefox Ver 1.0

As of today, Microsoft has not released patches to address these vulnerabilities. This means that any computer with IE version 6 is vulnerable.

It has been reported that exploit code is already available to hackers for at least one of the recently reported flaws in IE. This means that if you browse to a hacked Web site on purpose or are tricked into doing so, your machine may be compromised without any intervention required on your part. (i.e. you will not be asked to click on something before being infected.)

The ACCC is recommending that people install and use Mozilla Firefox in place of IE. Firefox is highly standards compliant and can be used in most situations. Unfortunately, there are some Web pages on the Internet that will not work with anything other that IE in which case you may be forced to use IE to view those Web pages, but you should try to keep IE usage to a minimum.

Mozilla Firefox for Windows or Macs is free and can be downloaded at:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

If you are already using Firefox -- or Thunderbird or Mozilla -- upgrade to 1.0 if you're not already using it. Some security problems have recently been found in previous versions of these products. (Upgrade to Version 1.7.5 for Mozilla.)

For more information on the recent IE flaws, see the ZDNet article:
IE flaw threat hits the roof

ACCC Security

This announcement was posted by security@uic.edu on 01/10/2005

Feb 01 2005 - The tigger mail spool disks (where email inboxes are stored) have been reorganized internally to improve fault recovery, reliability and performance.

We don't expect any adverse consequences, and users should not notice any difference. But sometimes a fully loaded system behaves differently than it did under testing. So if you experience new problems with email -- on tigger only -- such as a corrupted inbox, please let us know at consult@uic.edu.

If you have a message that's been delivered since early Tuesday morning, February 1, that has a problem, please forward it to consult@uic.edu with full headers, and not as an attachment.

ACCC Basic Systems Group