Information Services & Technology would like to inform you that earlier this week a serious bug in a common internet tool "OpenSSL" was discovered. This weakness dubbed The Heartbleed Bug, affects a large number of websites and systems on the Internet that use the secure/encrypted SSL protocol for communication (ie. pages that start with https).
This tool is most often used when conducting e-commerce or exchanging private or personal information and is used at the University of Manitoba and across the globe.
We are pleased to report that no major enterprise wide systems were affected by this vulnerability and that IST has patched, updated or otherwise minimized the risk on the few systems that were found vulnerable.
However, we must caution everyone that sites you visit off campus may not be secure. System administrators around the globe are working to fix this issue. We urge you to use caution when using e-commerce sites unless the site has an official statement that they have fixed the issue, and then follow their guidelines. This may include changing the password that you use on those services.
Please be extra cautious with unsolicited emails related to your personal or business accounts. Now is the perfect opportunity for an attacker to steal passwords or personal information through malicious web links or attachments. Always visit the account site directly and do not follow links in email that you cannot verify are legitimate.
The University of Manitoba is not asking you to change any service passwords at this time.
If you have any questions or concerns please contact the Service Desk at 204-474-8600.
IST Help & Solutions Centre 123 Fletcher Argue 230 Neil John MacLean Library 204-474-8600 support@umanitoba.ca
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http://lists.umanitoba.ca/mailman/listinfo/ist-alerts Updated information is also available on Facebook, Twitter and the IST Blog. Please visit http://umanitoba.ca/ist/help and click on the corresponding links.
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