Computer Services will be performing network maintenance tomorrow morning from 5 am to 6 am. During this time all networking services such as www.rockhurst.edu, email, WebCT, Oracleweb, user shares, printing, Cisco Clean Access, and the internet connection will be unavailable. If you have any questions or concerns please contact the Computer Services Help Desk at x4357 or via email at helpdesk@rockhurst.edu.

This is a reminder that all use of the Rockhurst network is subject to the terms and conditions of the Rockhurst University Computer Usage Policy.

This is also a reminder that copyright infringement is in clear violation of the Rockhurst University Computer Usage Policy. Specifically, the Rockhurst computer network can only be used for legal purposes and may NOT be used in the "Violation of … any copyright or trademark law, including unauthorized copying of copyright-protected material."

RIAA Copyright Infringement Allegations

In the past month, Rockhurst has received notice from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and other groups, that certain individuals within the Rockhurst University community have committed copyright infringement in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Rockhurst University is obligated to respond to any and all reports of such violations and has suspended network access for the accused individuals, per demand of the RIAA attorneys.

P2P File Sharing is NOT Anonymous

Each of the RIAA allegations Rockhurst has received has included very specific location and identification information about individual and the alleged copyright infringement. Each user should be aware that file trading is NOT anonymous and that any individual engaged in p2p activity can be identified and tracked down.

We have reason to suspect that there may be more Rockhurst students sharing files in violation of the Rockhurst University Computer Usage Policy. While the RIAA has not issued a subpoena (YET), if subpoenaed, Rockhurst will be required to hand over student names to the RIAA for them to reclaim statutory damages (which can reach $150k per act of willful infringement).

Use of P2P File Sharing Software is Forbidden

This is an official notice to all users to remove peer-to-peer file sharing software. Examples of forbidden software include, but are not limited to, LimeWire, Kazaa, Gnutella, iMesh, and BitTorrent clients.

Any user found in violation of this policy may result in long term suspension or complete termination of such user's Rockhurst University network, e-mail, and Cisco Clean Access account in addition to any financial liability that you may personally incur from the RIAA or any other trade groups representing the owners of the copyrighted materials that you are sharing with others

Severe weather last night caused the power to fail on campus at approximately 4:30AM. Our datacenter's battery backup system kept systems up as long as possible but after 30 minutes our systems were automatically shut down to prevent damage. As of 8:30AM all servers on campus should be back up and running. If you are still experiencing issues with the network related to this outage please contact the Help Desk.

Previously RUCS would on request "exempt" the MAC addresses for the wireless network cards of devices like iPhones, Palm or Windows Mobile PDAs.  In the past, the number of these devices was such that it was easy to track who was using the devices, however the exponential growth in the number of these devices in recent years has reached a point where we are no longer able to manage them. In addition, these devices are increasingly becoming the target of security vulnerabilities.

Effective May 1, 2008, RUCS will no longer exempt these devices on our wireless network. In the future, users who wish to access the Internet on our campus with these devices will need to authenticate through their device's web browser, just as they do when accessing the Internet from any non-Rockhurst managed system.

If the device does not have a web browser capable of authentication on our network, RUCS will deal with this on a case-by-case basis.

This change will have absolutely no effect on the use of any cellular provider data connection (EDGE/3G/EVDO, etc) on campus. Only the "rockhurst" and "student" 802.11b/g wireless connections on campus.

We appreciate your assistance in this effort to secure and streamline our operations.

While the struggle against unsolicited email is never ending, RUCS is committed to the fight. On an average day, Rockhurst receives over 600,000 external emails per day, of which less than 3% are considered legitimate, not taking into account ones that are not captured by our protection systems and must be manually deleted by our users.

Not only is SPAM a massive inconvenience to our users, it also spreads malicious content that can damage our infrastructure or expose our users personal information. It also wastes network bandwidth and taxes resources that should be used for more legitimate purposes. 

Currently the three major ways we block SPAM & malware are:

• At our gateway, using our Barracuda SPAM firewall.
• On our mail systems, utilizing server-side protection software.
• At our clients, using Outlook's built in Junk Mail filter and McAfee Anti-Virus.

This weekend we will be activating another layer of protection. This layer, known as "in the cloud filtering" by our Internet service provider, will help block SPAM closer to its source before it ever reaches our network. Not only will this change help reduce the SPAM, it should free up significant resources on our network. The result should be faster and more reliable email delivery as well as a faster Internet connection for the campus.

We will never stop all the SPAM. As fast as our filters can adapt to new threats, the threats adapt to the filters. Our hope is that our users begin seeing significant improvement this week. Any SPAM system is prone to false-positives, if you feel that legitimate emails are being blocked by this change, please contact us immediately.

Update April 17: Mail delivery from some servers may have been delayed over the last week as we've implemented this change. We apologize for the delay, however, at this time everything should be fully operational and our external message traffic on the network has already reduced by 95%. Users should be seeing a significant decrease in spam at this time.

In addition to the regular monthly Windows Updates that Microsoft will release this week, the following software on Rockhurst workstations will be updated or installed.

• SmartFTP 3.0, build 1012 (changelog)
• Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.13 (changelog)
• Paint.NET 3.30 (changelog)
• McAfee Enterprise Anti-Virus 8.5 Patch 5 (changelog)

If you have any questions please contact us.

Computer Services, in conjunction with our partners at CDW-G, AT&T and Microsoft, is proud to announce that we will be holding our first ever Halo 3 Team Slayer Tournament!

The tournament is April 12, 2008 in Conway Hall from 11AM to 5PM. It is open to all current Rockhurst students as well as active staff and faculty. We've got a lot of really cool prizes from our partners including:

• Copies of Halo 3 and Gears of War for Xbox 360, courtesy of Microsoft
• 3-Month Pre-Paid Subcription Cards for Xbox Live, courtesy of Computer Services
• Sansa MP3 Players, courtesy of CDW-G
• Palm Centro Smartphone (Grand Prize), courtesy of AT&T

For more information, visit our tournament website at www.rockhurst.edu/halo3

In addition to the regular monthly Windows Updates that Microsoft will release this week, the following software on Rockhurst workstations will be updated or installed.

• Java Runtime Environment 6, Update 5
• 7-Zip 4.57
• SmartFTP 2.5, build 1008
• Adobe Flash 9, latest build
• Adobe Shockwave 10, latest build

If you have not restarted your workstation since Adobe 8.1.2 or Firefox 2.0.0.12 were released last month, you will also be required to install those updates at that time.

Adobe Reader 8.1.2 has been pushed to campus and should be installed the next time that your system is restarted. This version will replace all previous versions installed on campus systems.

This upgrade was made for three very important reasons:

• Security vulnerabilities were present in previous versions of Adobe Reader which could allow malicious remote code execution. (more information)
• Rolling 8.1.2 out to everyone will standardize the version of the software that the Help Desk supports on campus.
• Upcoming upgrades to the Banner documentation system will require Adobe 8 to be utilized.

Again, to install this upgrade simply reboot your computer while it is plugged into the campus network. If you have any questions about this upgrade please feel free to contact us.

If you have Adobe Acrobat (not Reader) installed on your computer, it will not be changed by this installation except that you may notice an additional shortcut created on your Desktop.

Firefox 2.0.0.12 has been deployed to systems on campus. This is a bug & security fix only and should not introduce any new features to the product. A list of the fixes can be obtained from Mozilla.org.

Please contact us if you have any questions or issues related to this update.