To: All Faculty & All Academic Professionals & All Civil Service Staff
           <everybody@illinois.edu> 
    From: "Sue Lewis" <sml@uiuc.edu>

Reply-To: sml@uiuc.edu
 Subject: MASSMAIL - Immediate action: Microsoft vulnerability


As you may have read in the newspaper or heard from colleagues on campus, 
the national educational and business communities are responding to an 
unprecedented network attack affecting Microsoft systems-- desktops, 
laptops, and servers. CITES has been working with the campus computer 
security contacts in each unit to make sure the "patches" (system repairs) 
are applied to the tens of thousands of systems on campus running Microsoft 
operating systems.  Even at that,  the so-called Blaster worm associated 
with this attack has affected over seven hundred systems on the Urbana 
campus.   There are still several thousand computers on campus running the 
Microsoft operating system that remain unprotected.

If  your computer runs the Microsoft operating system and you are 
responsible for maintaining it,  we are asking you to remove your computer 
from the network or apply patches IMMEDIATELY.  Not only should you worry 
about your desktop system at work, but also any laptop computer or 
computers at home that use the campus VPN services to connect to the 
network.   Patches are available at no charge at 
http://www.cites.uiuc.edu/sus   If you need personal assistance, you may 
contract with our Departmental Services OnSite Support service 
(onsite@uiuc.edu or 333-8628 during normal business hours).

Because of the impact to our infrastructure caused by this attack, we may 
need to block subnets, even at the departmental level, to prevent this 
fast-spreading worm from doing more damage.   We have received advisories 
from the federal Department of Homeland Security and other security-related 
groups regarding the potential damage from this attack and appropriate 
actions.  We apologize in advance for the substantial inconvenience and 
disruption these steps may cause, but again emphasize that this is a 
problem affecting thousands of universities and corporations across the 
nation and we are trying to minimize and contain damage on our campus.

Other universities have estimated their costs for addressing this problem 
in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are taking every step we can to 
minimize expenditure in terms of time, money and lost data.  

Sincerely,
Sue Lewis
Deputy Chief Information Officer
Director of Strategic Communications
Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services
(CITES)
sml@uiuc.edu
217-244-0708This mailing approved by:
The Office of the Chancellor

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