The mission of Rockhurst University Computer Services is to facilitate and promote the use of information technologies in support of the academic, administrative, and community service goals of the university. RUCS is committed to providing reliable, secured, and equitable access to and use of its computing, networking, telephone, and information resources.

WebCT & Outlook Web Access Issues, 11/21/08

We are currently experiencing issues with out Outlook Web Access and WebCT servers. We hope to have them back online as soon as possible.

Update: We have restored access to WebCT. We continue to investigate the Outlook Web Access (email.rockhurst.edu) issues.

Update 2: Outlook Web Access has been restored.

Issues with Mac OS X Clean Access Agent prompt campus wide removal

It has recently come to our attention that the Cisco Clean Access Agent for Mac OS X is malfunctioning and periodically disconnecting users from the Internet, even when the computer has a good connections to our network. We apologize that we have been unable to correct this issue.

As a result, Mac OS X users should uninstall the Cisco Clean Access Agent from their computers and authenticate through their web browser of choice (Safari, Firefox, Camino, etc) – in our testing the removal of the agent has alleviated the problems these systems are having. We have adjusted our network policies to no longer require the agent for Mac OS X.

Faculty/Staff Exchange Issues

We are currently having issues with out faculty/staff Exchange e-mail server. We will update you when we have more information.

Updated:  We believe we have solved problem but are continuing to monitor the systems.

Campus Power Outage

Because of the campus power outage networking resources will be offline.  This includes internet, email, Oracleweb, WebCT, VPN, printing, and logging on campus computers.  The outage will be Saturday November 1st starting at 6:30 am and lasting 8 hours.

Microsoft releases emergency patch for critical Windows vulnerability

Microsoft has released a patch to correct a critical vulnerability in Microsoft Windows operating systems. Effected version include Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows Vista and Windows 2008.

The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if an affected system received a specially crafted RPC request. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability without authentication to run arbitrary code. It is possible that this vulnerability could be used in the crafting of a wormable exploit. Microsoft typically releases updates for its software once per month, however, the nature of this vulnerability is very severe and Microsoft has opted to release this patch outside of the normal schedule.

This is one of the few times Microsoft has done this for a critical update, highlighting its importance.

Users of non-Rockhurst managed systems are encouraged to update this systems immediately. To manually update your computer, open Internet Explorer, go to Tools menu, and select Windows Update. Click the Express button to just get high-priority updates, or click Custom to get high-priority plus lower-priority updates. Install the updates and reboot your computer. Rockhurst managed systems have been set to automatically install this update.

In either case, you must reboot your computer to be protected.

For more information:

Rockhurst network users are protected by McAfee Anti-Virus as a requirement for access on their personal machines and we also recommend utilizing either the Windows built in firewall or a third-party firewall to protect your machine from these types of threats. However, these levels of protection can only mitigate your risk from being compromised by such an attack. Regular updates to Windows or Mac OS X and all of the software installed on your computer other are critical to keeping yourself secure on any network.

If you need assistance installing this patch or need more information on how to keep your computer secure, please contact our office.

VirusScan false positive for Windows Vista users

Users of Microsoft Windows Vista with the Rockhurst provided McAfee VirusScan Enterprise may have received messages on their systems yesterday that they have been infected with a virus, PWS-LegMir, from the file conime.exe. This is a "false positive" caused by an error in the 5409 DAT file released by McAfee on Monday, October 20. Early this morning, McAfee released an emergency DAT file, 5410, that corrects this issue.

conime.exe is a Windows Vista system file and should not be removed from your system. It is not infected with any kind of virus.

If you have any questions please contact our office.

'Courses' folder on Isabel now the 'I Drive'

I DriveStudents will notice when logging into Rockhurst workstations that they now have a new "I Drive" in addition to their standard "H Drive" -- this new network drive is mapped to the courses folder on Isabel where faculty frequently put information out for students in their class. We have made this change at the request of various students who voiced their opinion that we needed to make accessing this information easier.

To access the new "I Drive" open the My Computer icon on the desktop and select courses on 'isabel' (I:) from the available drives under Network Drives.

If you have other feedback about how Computer Services can make Rockhurst technology more convenient for you, please feel free to send us an email at helpdesk@rockhurst.edu.

Banner and Oracleweb maintenance, October 17

We will be performing major maintenance on the systems that run Banner, Argos, and Oracleweb starting at 5 p.m. on Friday, October 17, 2008. Those systems will be unavailable until noon on Sunday, October 19, 2008. Notices have been posted already within Oracleweb to notify students of the upcoming outage.

No other systems will be affected. Email and network services will continue to be available as usual. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at x4357.

Scheduled maintenance on Friday, October 10

RUCS will be performing scheduled maintenance to our network core this Friday, October 10, from 6pm until 10pm and then again on Saturday, October 11 from 10am to 4pm. During these times some network services such as e-mail and VPN may intermittently be inaccessible (5-15 minutes) but we do not anticipate any prolonged outages from this upgrade. If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.

Security Alert: Phishing attacks target RU students & employees

RUCS would like to alert the campus to a targeted phishing attack towards both students and employees. The message is typically sent from a "Nicole Leboyd" (sometimes listed as "Leboyd, Nicole" or as "Leboyd Nicole") with the email address nleboyd{at}msm.edu, although the names and addresses used are not always the same.

The content of the message instructs users to confirm their webmail identity by submitting their full name, date of birth, ID and password to them. 

RUCS will never ask you to verify this information via email in this manner. If you have replied to this message and included any of the above information, please change your password and contact the Help Desk immediatly so we can take approrprate mesaure to protect your account and your identity.

Users are instructed to ignore and delete this message. We have taken steps to prevent it from passing through our mail filters in the future.

Syndicate content