Fwd: 6/24/2009 Daily Report from The Chronicle of Higher Education

[Allison Dolan <adolan () MIT EDU>]

This listserv in the news  :-)
......Allison  Dolan (617-252-1461)



Begin forwarded message:

> Feds Reach Out to Universities Targeted in Massive Spam Operation 
> (See item)

June 23, 2009

Feds Reach Out to Universities Targeted in Massive Spam Operation

Prosecutors are reaching out to universities that may have been  
victims of spammers who allegedly culled e-mail addresses from more  
than 2,000 colleges and bombarded students with messages.

It’s the latest twist in a story that broke in April, when  
prosecutors announced the indictment of two brothers who allegedly  
used the University of Missouri computer network in a national  
spamming operation. The spammers are said to have deployed extracting  
programs that harvested more than eight million student e-mail  
addresses.

Martin Manjak, information-security officer at the State University  
of New York at Albany, said that a “U.S. Department of Justice Victim  
Notification System” e-mail message he received last week was the  
“first such notice we had received” from the department. He was one  
of nearly a dozen people from universities around the country to  
discuss the notifications in recent days on a security listserv  
maintained by Educause, the higher-education technology association.

“It came out of the blue as far as we were concerned,” Mr. Manjak  
told The Chronicle. “We had no idea that we had been victimized by  
these individuals, although we certainly get our fair share of spam.”

The e-mail message the university received, which Mr. Manjak shared  
with The Chronicle, came from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the  
Western District of Missouri. It begins, “Your name was forwarded to  
our office by law enforcement as a victim (or potential victim)” in  
the spamming case. The message notifies receivers of their rights as  
victims and provides instructions for seeking more information. It  
also tells recipients how to notify prosecutors if they believe they  
may have “information or evidence that will aid in the prosecution of  
this case.”

The trial is scheduled to begin November 2, but the e-mail message  
cautions that “most criminal cases are resolved by a plea agreement.”

Asked if he was sure the notification wasn’t itself a piece of spam,  
Mr. Manjak e-mailed this reply: “It would be a pretty elaborate hoax  
if it wasn’t from the DOJ, but I rarely use the word ‘sure’ in  
anything that deals with Internet security.” —Marc Parry