Information Technology News Archive

1996 - 2017

EA System Spring Quarter Hacker Attack

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In a past edition of NACS-News, information was shared about the increasing frequency of computer system break-ins and related activities across the Internet. Several other attacks have been fought off by UCI computer supporters since that article was written. One major incident involved NACS’ student computing cluster, EA. In late May, an intruder used a flaw in Sun’s UNIX operating system (now fixed) to gain privileged access to the EA system. He ran a network “packet sniffer” for about 24 hours, which enabled him to collect passwords for about 1300 EA users. As a result, NACS was forced to have each of those 1300 people change his or her password, which was a major inconvenience for all.

NACS continues to investigate ways to reduce the impact of visits by these unwelcome intruders. Substantial staff time is already put into monitoring security alerts and installing patches to correct operating system security problems as they are discovered. NACS has obtained a bulk software license for a secure-Telnet product for Macs and PCs. Using secure-Telnet to connect to remote hosts protects user data and passwords from being sniffed by intruders who gain illegal access to systems connected to the network.

UCI Internet Weather Report

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The Internet is a complex mesh of local, regional, national, and international networks linked together to behave like a single network. Your ability to access a particular network host at any particular instance depends on the status of all the networks that host’s information “packets” must traverse to reach you at UCI. The condition of networks depend on the activities of countless other network users as well as the status of a multitude of network routers and other devices. Frequently, one network or another is congested or suffering from other problems.

The network is much like the weather — some days are nicer than others, and sometimes one part of the world may be experiencing severe thunderstorms while others are basking in sunshine.

NACS has installed the “UCI Internet Weather Report” to help UCI network users get a sense of the condition of the Internet, and UCI’s connection to it. This is a web page that provides a glimpse of the “Internet Weather” at any point of time by summarizing the current “weather” between UCI and hosts on various networks around the country. The network weather is depicted as a color coded bar (green’s good, red’s bad, yellow’s in-between) determined from the amount of network data being “lost” between UCI and the remote host. This data loss is referred to as “dropped packets” and causes transmissions to be repeated until they are successfully received. These retries slow network response time.

To stay in touch with the weather (the UCI Internet weather that is) add a bookmark to the UCI Internet Weather Report:http://weather.uci.edu/

Campus E4E Faculty/Staff E-mail Service Upgraded

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In early May, the campus E4E server was upgraded from a Sun SPARCserver 5 to a Sun Microsystems Ultra Enterprise 2 dual processor system. The new system has approximately 5 times the processing power of the old system. In addition, NACS made several other system software and configuration changes designed to improve efficiency.

Users who had been experiencing delays in mail delivery times and in accessing their mail noticed a big improvement from the upgrade. System statistics show that whereas the old CPU had troubles keeping up with the constant user load, the new one is virtually always caught up. NACS will monitor the status of the system and strive to keep processing power at the appropriate level as user demands increase.

NACS Staffing News

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In April, Jim Surlow was named manager of NACS’ Distributed Computing Support (DCS) group, taking over for Lyle Wiedeman who has assumed the role of managing NACS’ participation in the Electronic Education Environment (EEE). Lyle continues to manage NACS Departmental Support efforts.

Domingos Begalli left DCS in February to become Physical Sciences‘ School Computing Coordinator. Joining DCS are Colleen Melzer, a new hire from the commercial sector, and Evans Curtis, long time day-shift NACS computer operator. Tri Tran, who has been a part of NACS for several years, but assigned to School of Engineering lab support, will become a DCS Unix SysAdmin after his Engineering position is replaced later this summer.

Computing Support Coordination

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NACS sponsors two important coordination groups on campus, the Computer Support Coordinator (CSC) and Computer Lab Coordinator (CLC) groups. Both groups are aimed at helping support the departmental computer staff who support end-users. The groups try to build consensus about UCI computing environment directions, facilitate discussions of computer related matters, share information, and establish peer support. Topics of past CSC meetings include Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 networking and security, and a discussion of NT E-mail and Directory Services protocols. Topics of past CLC meetings include establishing minimum configuration guidelines for the purchase of desktop computers, and a presentation of NACS’ Uniprint Print job cost-recovery system.

The CSC and CLC groups meet on the last Wednesday of each month, alternating every other month. Meeting times and agendas are announced by e-mail using the UCICSCG@UCI.EDU and COMPUTER-LABS@UCI.EDU LISTSERV mailing lists, which campus computing supporters are welcome to join.

If you support computing and/or networking at UCI, you are invited to attend future CSC and/or CLC meetings. If you do not support computing yourself, please pass this invitation along to those in your department who do.