UPDATE: The subject lines of these messages have begun to vary. The payload remains the same. Subject lines may include:
CNN Alerts: Breaking news
CNN Alerts: My Custom Alert

Lawrence is full of PODS, U-Hauls, and sweaty people in borrowed pick-up trucks. That can only mean one thing: KU will be back in session soon. Get set up and on the right foot with a few tips from your friends in the IT Security Office.

Keep an eye out for bogus phishing messages in your inbox. Over the weekend, the bad guys unleashed a torrent of phishing e-mails in an attempt to harvest the login names and passwords of people at KU. The messages look a lot like this one:

Click to enlarge

UPDATE:

Please be alert for SMS messages (also commonly referred to as "text messages" or simply "texts") arriving on your mobile phones. Users report receiving the following text message from "system(at)66fcu.org":

So you got your shiny new MacBook and you're keen to use it at the library, the bookstore, the coffeshop. The cords have been cut and you're ready to go on the road! Having a mobile Mac is handy, but you want to protect your computer and your data.

Graham Lee, Senior Macintosh Software Engineer at Sophos, published a whitepaper entitled 10 steps to better secure your Mac laptop from physical data theft. Here's a summary:

Win cash, gain experience, and earn national recognition with a poster or one short video!

The EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Computer and Network Security Task Force, with the help of ResearchChannel, is conducting a contest in search of short computer security awareness videos and posters developed by college students for college students. The contest seeks creative, topical, and effective posters and videos of two minutes or less that focus attention on computing security problems and how best to handle them.

It's okay, you can admit it. You know that e-mail from that credit union you've never done business with is a fake. You've heard your IT person tell you a million times never to click those links in e-mails. Maybe you even heard it here, but...man, it's tempting. You just want to know what those phishing sites look like! Or maybe you want to see if this one might be real this time!

The IT Security Office has received spam e-mails attempting to solicit donations for relief to the residents of the Sichuan province in southwestern China. We strongly recommend that you do not respond to unsolicited requests; if you wish to give, seek out a trustworthy charity organization.

An example of the solicitation appears below:

Click to enlarge:

You may think you've heard some bad music and seen some bad movies, but they probably didn't infect your computer with malicious software. This week that could change.

The City of Lawrence will host the first electronic recycling event this Saturday, April 26 from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. at the KU Lied Center parking lot, 1600 Stewart Drive.

The city invites residents and small businesses to recycle old, unwanted electronic equipment. Electronic equipment may contain hazardous components such as lead, mercury and cadmium. Recycling your unwanted electronic equipment keeps these hazardous components out of the landfill.

Items accepted for recycling are: