Information Technology Announcements

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The Smith College Computer Store is having a ONE DAY Employee Appreciation Event on Wednesday, April 19^th from 8:30- 4:00.

What to Know: There is an active zero-day vulnerability that affects all Windows OS (including Windows 10). Opening a Microsoft Word file from an untrusted source can compromise your entire system.

How it Works: When opened, the exploit code makes a connection to a remote server controlled by the attacker. A malicious HTML file is downloaded, disguised as a ".rtf file," and installs malware.

What to Do: 

Apple is pushing you to adopt two-factor authentication for your Apple ID when you upgrade the operating system on your iPhone or iPad. During the upgrade process, you see a screen like this:

We want to make you aware of recent changes in legislation that affect your privacy while you use Internet resources, and how you can protect your privacy as you continue to use these resources. On Monday, April 3, 2017 President Trump signed a bill to remove Internet privacy rules passed during the Obama administration to prevent tracking and sharing of people’s browsing and app activity without permission.

The unexpected service disruption around 5:45pm on Wednesday, March 22, 2017 was caused by the failure of a critical network switch that provides network connectivity within, to, and from the campus. Although the initial failure was caused by one portion of the switch, a restart of the switch revealed a secondary failure within the switch from which the device was unable to recover.

The unexpected service disruption around 5:45pm on Wednesday, March 22, 2017 was caused by the failure of a critical network switch that provides network connectivity within, to, and from the campus. Although the initial failure was caused by one portion of the switch, a restart of the switch revealed a secondary failure within the switch from which the device was unable to recover. At this point, the resiliency of the device was compromised and it was unable to function.

Apple released updates for many of its products yesterday that address serious security vulnerabilities. Failure to apply these updates leaves your computer, phone, or tablet open to hacking over the Internet.

If you are running the following operating system versions on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, we urge you to download and install the latest updates.

MacOS (Sierra): upgrade to MacOS 10.12.3. If you haven't upgraded your MacOS to Sierra (version 10.12), then you don't need to apply this security update. 

IT services that depend upon back-end storage arrays are either not functioning or are functioning intermittently due to a problem with those back-end arrays. We are working the problem and apologize for the interruption of essential services such as email, the website, network storage, Moodle, etc.

Amherst IT

updated 12/28/2016 3:30PM

Lynda.com communicated with serveral users on campus about a data breach the company experienced that might have included information about the Lynda.com training courses a person has taken as well as contact information. This notice concerns Amherst College account holders who access Lynda.com.

We have received scattered reports of a licensing issue with Adobe software. Adobe recently released an update that disabled licensing of previous versions for enterprise licensing, which is the type of license the College has with Adobe. If you are presented with a screen similar to the one below when you open Adobe software, please contact us at x2526 so we can provide assistance.

Here is the screen that some people are receiving when starting Adobe software:

October 31, 2016 - We have received reports of an increase in spam activity since Tuesday of last week. We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused and the unacceptable nature of the messages. Although many messages contain information on how to unsubscribe, it is best to not spend time doing so as there is a risk of confirming your email address to spammers. For those messages with the subject line marked as "{SPAM?}", you can create a filter to automatically move the messages to another folder, as described on the following pages:

Apple released the latest version of their OS for iPads and iPhones, iOS 10, on Tuesday, and some people experienced issues with the upgrade, including loss of data and disabled phones. Apple generally releases follow-up updates soon after a major version upgrade and you may prefer to install the upgrade to iOS 10 once Apple releases their first update to the new OS. If you prefer to do so, you can decline the alert to upgrade to iOS 10 when it first becomes available.

We are receiving phishing emails such as this one.

Subject: Messages on hold for username@amherst.edu

Messages on hold for username@amherst.edu enter here to read.

Please do not respond. You may forward it to phishing@amherst.edu.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released an alert on tech-support themed telephone scams. In these schemes, fraudulent callers claim to be from legitimate technical support organizations and offer to fix computer problems that don't exist. Users should not give control of their computers to anyone who calls offering to "fix" a problem.

If you receive an email that looks like the following, do not reply or click the link. Delete the email. If you did click the link and enter your Amherst username and password, try to change your Amherst password immediately. If you can't, please contact AskIT.