During the past six months OIT has had numerous reports regarding poor performance and unreliability that were shown to caused by spyware, software that may unknowingly send confidential information from you machine.
Spyware often masks itself as a useful tool and people unknowingly
install these programs not realizing the dangers. Given the increasing concern over spyware that is now targeting confidential information on your computer, either your own or files that contain confidential information regarding other members of the UMBC community, OIT is working on a number of steps to protect the campus from spyware. These steps will cause some applications, especially non-standard web browser toolbars designed for Internet Explorer, to stop working.
The steps we will be taking are the following:
Beginning on Friday August 26th, 2005 OIT will begin using our Tipping
Point intrusion prevention system to block most of the common Spyware tools that exist. This may result in some of the more common Spyware tools such as Gator, Weather Bug, 180 Search Assistant and Hotbar to stop working. While most Spyware tools do provide some legitimate functionality (e.g. Internet Searches, Weather Reports) they also contain more nefarious programming code that records and transmits your browsing history back to the company. In some cases installation of a seemingly legitimate application can result in keyboard sniffing software being installed that can in turn provide unknown external sites with all of your keyboard activity (e.g. Logins and Passwords to mail, banking etc.).
One of the best preventative measures that you can take is to make sure that your Anti Virus is up to McAfee version 8 and that you have
installed spybot search and destroy. This software can be found at:
http://www.umbc.edu/oit/security We are launching this change before the semester to protect students before they move in, and faculty and staff prior to the start of semester. If you have any questions please contact the OIT help desk at helpdesk@umbc.edu
--
Michael Carlin
Director of Infrastructure and Support
Office of Information Technology