The project to replace EdLAN reached another milestone recently, with the completion of the migration of all subnets away from the old EdLAN core routers across to the new EdLAN distribution routers. There’s now some tidying-up to be done, and the parts which might affect us in Informatics are scheduled for Tuesday 23rd. Specifically, some […]
Please be aware of a current wave of phishing emails which purport to be voicemails with subjects such as “Voicemail (48 secs)”. These are scams designed to trick you into supplying various login and personal details, they are being sent from compromised accounts, which is why they look real. Please do not open these emails, […]
Singularity container platform is now available on Ubuntu DICE. Singularity is a container platform, perhaps the most well-supported Docker alternative. It allows you to run containers that package up pieces of software in a way that is portable and reproducible. You can build or download pre-built images from external resources (including Docker Hub) and run […]
The University is increasingly concerned about the security of our computing services, and as such is moving vulnerable services behind the University firewall or simply shutting them down altogether. With the closure of staffmail and everyone now using Office 365, our authenticated smtp.inf.ed.ac.uk service is a service with relatively little use, is world accessible, and […]
When the School of Informatics was first formed, existing individual department services were kept running. One of those services was ftp.cogsci.ed.ac.uk. However over the years its functionality became less and less, and currently only allows public downloads of content that has not been updated in 10 years. Looking at the logs the vast majority of […]
To improve the security of our HTTPS web sites, we have removed support for older/less secure cipher suites, particularly those susceptible to the SWEET32 attack. This should not impact any current web browsers, but old devices, eg old android mobile phones may find they can no longer connect to our HTTP websites. Neil
As you’ll all be aware, the University is tightening up on network security in response to outside threats. Within Informatics we have also been looking at ways to improve our security, and one area we have identified is that of self-managed machines in offices. For many years we have provided network ports in offices and […]
As you’ll be aware by now, EdLAN is changing, though rather more slowly than was originally anticipated for various reasons, and the way that Informatics connects to it has to change too. Under the old EdLAN, the Informatics network in the central area (Forum, Appleton Tower, Bayes and Wilkie) had a 10Gbps connection to the […]
The Chief Information Security Officer for the University announced on Monday 21st March that all users of the University VPN service MUST reset their password. Users of the Informatics OpenVPN service are not affected. Note that, as this is a centrally provided service, any queries or support requests must be directed to Information Services. Here […]
Following Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is calling on all UK organisations to increase their vigilance for cyber attacks. It is clear that various groups are now using this crisis as an opportunity to launch new phishing email attacks. For example, there are scams asking people to "Help Ukraine" and […]
