Starting at approximately 2:00am on Wednesday, December 10, the student email server running Microsoft Exchange 2003 experienced a system crash. We were able to determine that the cause of the failure was that our McAfee Anti-Virus scanning system detected a virus in an essential Exchange log file and deleted the file while Exchange was still active. This caused the database to fail and prevented it from coming back online.

Unfortunately, after contacting McAfee support and attempting to restore the log file that had been removed, this did not allow us to reactivate the Exchange database. It was determined that the database was damaged by the failure and claimed to be missing two log files that did not exist. We then contacted Microsoft support shortly after noon on Wednesday and attempted to restore the database from a backup that was performed on Tuesday night. Because there was still damage to the Exchange system, we then were required to perform what is known as a "hard repair", defragmentation and then a low-level integrity check to fix any errors and make sure there was no longer any corruption on the system.

We are currently experiencing problems with our student mail server. It has been offline since approximately 7:30 this morning. Unfortunately, at this moment, we do not have an ETA on when the email will be available. Our technicians have been working all day and will continue to work non-stop through the night until the system is back online.

This downtime does not affect faculty/staff email system access, or students with access to our Microsoft Exchange Labs email system.

We apologize for this inconvenience and assure you that were working as quickly as possible to correct this issue.

Update - December 11, 2008 @ 9:10AM: After working through the night, we are continuing to make progress on this issue. We are running repair utilities on our Exchange databases and hope to complete those processes soon. We will update you as soon more information is available. All faculty & staff have been notified, via email, of this situation and will need to make adjustments to course requirements as needed.

Update - December 12, 2008 @ 7:20AM: We were able to successfully repair the Exchange database. This completed shortly after midnight this morning. Student email should be fully operational at this time.

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.

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.

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.

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 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:

• http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/Bulletin/MS08-067.mspx
• http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms08-oct.mspx
• http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=2062

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.

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.

Students 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.

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.