Open Thread (9/1/2008)

Posted September 1st, 2008 at 03:57 PM by wayward
in

Labor Day open thread...

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On September 1st, 2008 at 08:19 PM, Anonymous (not verified) said:

Regarding Greek life on campus‏From:Chancellor Richard Herman (chancellor@illinois.edu)Sent:Tue 9/02/08 12:29 AMReply-to:chancellor@illinois.eduTo:All Faculty & All Academic Professionals & All Civil Service Staff & All Undergrad Students & All Grad Students (everybody@uiuc.edu)Dear Students,

Many of you may be aware of an event known as Rush. It is my objective to
warn you of the potential downsides of Greek organizations. I advise you to
not succumb to the aggressive recruitment tactics used by these
organizations. It has been my concern over the years, that the Greek culture
of alcoholism and lack of respect for the community degrades campus life.
These organizations present themselves as prestigious, yet are
discriminatory, serve to perpetuate social inequality, especially with
respect to the opposite gender, and promote a lack of diversity. Many
students have expressed concerns with regards to safety on campus,
particularly due to Greek culture and behavior. It is my hope that a
student's experience on campus strengthens one's individuality, but the Greek
system emphasizes the group above all, without cause or reason. This is
detrimental to the purpose of universities.

I hope that you will consider wisely.

GDI Chancellor Richard Herman it would appear that the chancellor is not pleased with the U of I greek system, but this is a fairly damning indictment of a group of students overall.....

On September 1st, 2008 at 08:35 PM, wayward said:

I'm calling prank.  First, these kinds of mailings usually have Massmail information and this one doesn't.  Second, I viewed the headers of the original and saw this line:

Received: from illinois.edu (Newman-71.newmanhall.org [209.174.188.71])
by expredir7.cites.uiuc.edu (8.14.2/8.14.2) with SMTP id m81NYGmQ021441

Hermann sending Massmail from a computer in Newman Hall? I don't think so.

On September 1st, 2008 at 10:01 PM, wayward said:

And an email from Robin Kaler with subject "MASSMAIL - email hoax"

Dear members of the campus community:

You may have received an email titled:  Regarding Greek life on campus.
This message was a hoax and was NOT sent by Chancellor Richard Herman and
was NOT authorized by the campus administration.

Robin Kaler
Associate Chancellor for Public Affairs

This mailing approved by:
The Office of the Chancellor
--
This Message sent via MASSMAIL.  < http://www.cites.uiuc.edu/services/massmail/ >

On September 1st, 2008 at 10:06 PM, Mike (not verified) said:

You are correct, Wayward.  A follow up email:

 

Date: Sun 31 Aug 10:17:00 CDT 2008
From: "Office of the Chancellor" <publicaffairs@illinois.edu> Add To Address Book
Subject: Hoax Email about Greek Life on Campus
To: "Recipients of Hoax Massmail" <everyone@uiuc.edu>

If you received a message from "chancellor@illinois.edu" with a subject line: Regarding Greek life on campus, please know that this was a prank and was not sent or authorized by Chancellor Richard Herman, his office or any officials at the University of Illinois.

Thank you,

Robin Kaler
Associate Chancellor for Public Affairs 
This targeted mailing approved by:
Office of the Chancellor 

---------------------------

Although... fake Chancellor Herman made some good points ;)

On September 1st, 2008 at 10:09 PM, Mike (not verified) said:

Wow, I just got the original prank email 3 more times after the notice from Robin Kaler.  I don't know much about tracing that kind of thing, but I imagine the perpetrator of the hoax is just asking to get caught at this point. 

On September 1st, 2008 at 10:19 PM, Run4cvrlib said:

They maybe new students and a little drunk and will be wondering who the heck is knocking on their door about now. Bummer man

akibare's picture
On September 1st, 2008 at 11:35 PM, akibare said:

Yet more reasons to filter "MASSMAIL" into ye olde spamme folder...

 

On September 2nd, 2008 at 07:13 AM, Anonymous (not verified) said:

why do i have the feeling that someone who was enrolled in school on Friday wont be enrolled in school at sunset today.................

On September 2nd, 2008 at 10:47 AM, wayward said:

I'm wondering if the sender really was stupid enough to use his own computer, or whether he just found an unprotected wireless connection to exploit.

On September 2nd, 2008 at 10:51 AM, pattsi said:

As I have previously admitted, I am not tech savvy. So my question has to do with the vulnerability of the university email addresses that someone could send a message to faculty, staff, students, and anyone else using an university email address?

Pattsi Petrie

On September 2nd, 2008 at 11:43 AM, wayward said:

As I have previously admitted, I am not tech savvy. So my question has to do with the vulnerability of the university email addresses that someone could send a message to faculty, staff, students, and anyone else using an university email address?

It's not hard to forge mail period, though the headers contain information about IP addresses.  IIRC, messing with header information takes a bit more effort.  Massmail is run by CITES and is usually sent during periods of lighter traffic (e.g., late night).  I believe that it's tightly controlled and there may be a fee for sending massmail.  What the prankster(s) probably did was harvest university email addresses.

This does raise some questions about whether the university's emergency alert system is vulnerable to stunts like this (or worse).

On September 2nd, 2008 at 01:28 PM, DaveM said:

Looking at my copy of the email, it doesn't look like they forged headers.  Instead, someone at Newman Hall set their computer to *look* like it was supposed to be an authorized UIUC mail server (easy to do) and sent out the email.  It's hard to say whether they harvested addresses and sent a massive BCC (likely) or whether a misconfiguration on the part of UIUC's real mail servers whitelists "From: Chancellor" and "To: Everybody" as being legitimate mail.  That would be a security hole, though it's far from clear whether that would impact any other systems.

The easiest way to tell would be to look at the last header, which in my case reads:

Received: from illinois.edu (Newman-71.newmanhall.org [209.174.188.71])
by expredir4.cites.uiuc.edu (8.14.2/8.14.2) with SMTP id m820F1P4005632
for <*********@uiuc.edu>; Mon, 1 Sep 2008 19:15:01 -0500 (CDT)

and start comparing dates/times and SMTP id's.  If they're all at the same time, more weight for the security hole hypothesis.  If different times, more weight to the BCC hypothesis.