The four computers in SS622 and their monitors and keyboards/mice have been upgraded.  The lwss printer is currently not accessible from coxeter.  We are investigating this problem.

Early this morning a final patch for bash was applied and all appears to be well with the departmental servers and linux desktops.

Once again we remind users that if you manage your own Linux/Unix or MacOS computer/laptop at home or in your office (especially if you have a webserver) then you should definitely fix this problem.

All the departmental servers have been patched to and users’ Red Hat desktops in the department have been updated to patch the serious bash bug that has been reported today.

There is an article at:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/09/24/bash_shell_vuln/

with some information about this.

There are still some issues and we are awaiting further patches.

If you manage your own Linux/Unix or MacOS computer (especially if you have a webserver) then you should definitely fix this problem.

From the InfoTech-L mailing list:

We have become aware that some instructors are sharing non-UofT online resources with students, and that in a select few cases, these sites have been taken over by hackers and phishers, who nefariously use those non-UofT sites to collect information from unsuspecting students who believe the sites are legitimate learning resources assigned by instructors.

Instructors are highly encouraged to regularly check the status of the resources they assign, and if they see that the site has been compromised, to (a) remove the link asap, (b) inform students and advise them to change passwords if they inadvertently entered a password into such a site, and (c) report the matter to their local EdTech or IT Professional or portal.help@utoronto.ca asap.

Please see, for more information:

http://www.systemstatus.utoronto.ca/incidents/wlsvt8jkcxtp

Welcome to the new IT Status website.  This site is newer and more secure (there were no problems with the older site, however the software was quite old and it was time to update it).  Attempts to access pages on the old website will be redirected here automatically.

If you would like to add this site to your RSS Feeds then please click on the on the RSS image icon just to the left of the “SUBSCRIBE” header of the right hand column of this page (some browsers do not properly display the word “SUBSCRIBE” and there may just be a blue area to the right of the icon), or you can do that more simply now via:

https://itstatus.math.toronto.edu/home/?feed=rss2

Please feel free to send comments about the new site to requests@math.toronto.edu.

Do you need to change your coxeter (and hence mail) password?

Due to the recent Heartbleed bug <http://main.its.utoronto.ca/news/heartbleed-notice/> we recommend that you change your coxeter password.  Simply type passwd on coxeter and follow the instructions.

If you are completely certain that you have never typed your coxeter password into a website (that includes departmental websites such as mail, since it is possible that website protections were compromised) and if you never typed your password into pine then as long as you do not use your coxeter password on any other sites/machines then you would not need to change your password.

New certificates have been installed on our two main servers www and mail.  These are the main servers where people might type in passwords; the other math.toronto.edu servers that use certificates will be updated on Monday.

The escalator.utoronto.ca sites are waiting for new certificates from the University.

It seems that only the web servers and mail in our department were affected by the Heartbleed bug.  We patched all of them immediately (which necessitated the coxeter reboot on Wednesday) and now are waiting to install updated certificates for our various servers.  Until the updated certificates are installed changing passwords and using them on our web or mail servers is not protected.  We hope to have the new certificates ready on Monday and at that point we will have more information about password resets.

The official UofT link for information about the Heartbleed bug is:

http://main.its.utoronto.ca/news/heartbleed-notice/

Earlier today there were some networking issues in the department due to failing ports on our main switch which caused various connectivity problems to various people (some people had trouble connecting to coxeter, others to the mail server and others to the printers).  Everything seems to be back to normal now.

We have recently been told that the installation of complete wireless coverage for the Earth Sciences Centre has now been scheduled and that it should be completed by the end of May.  New high-performance 802.11ac access points will be used.  This will be welcome news for our departmental members in ESC who have had to contend with very spotty wireless coverage in there for quite some time.