On Monday, April 26th, DoIT applied a patch to UMBC’s single sign-on solution, WebAuth, that improves security and lays the foundation for future enhancements. As a result of this change, WebAuth now briefly shows an intermediate page before redirecting the web browser to the requested site. This page quickly shows "Loading/Saving login session information from/to the browser..." .  Several users have expressed questions and concerns about this page, because it often is not on-screen long enough to read in its entirety. Rest assured that the intermediate pages are not malicious.  DoIT is actively working on improving this experience and making it less intrusive.  Within the next week you will see improvements to the text and look and feel of the pages.    Feel free to contact us if you have further questions. Thanks for bearing with us while we work to keep our infrastructure updated.

Todd Haddaway
Senior Director, Middleware and Application Infrastructure
DoIT

On Monday, April 26th, DoIT applied a patch to UMBC’s single sign-on solution, WebAuth, that improves security and lays the foundation for future enhancements. As a result of this change, WebAuth now briefly shows an intermediate page before redirecting the web browser to the requested site. This page quickly shows "Loading/Saving login session information from/to the browser..." .  Several users have expressed questions and concerns about this page, because it often is not on-screen long enough to read in its entirety. Rest assured that the intermediate pages are not malicious.  DoIT is actively working on improving this experience and making it less intrusive.  Within the next week you will see improvements to the text and look and feel of the pages.    Feel free to contact us if you have further questions. Thanks for bearing with us while we work to keep our infrastructure updated.

Todd Haddaway

Senior Director, Middleware and Application Infrastructure

DoIT

Blackboard course shells for SU2021 were created on April 27, 2021.

The Ultra Course Preview setting is again enabled in SU2021 courses to allow faculty adoption with anupdated support schedule of Ultra (see prior announcement). The Ultra Course Preview tool allows faculty to convert an existing Original course and see what it looks like in Ultra. 

Ally, an accessibility tool, is also enabled in all new course shells as of SU2019 Ally automatically scans uploaded and created course content, then performs a series of steps to make that content more accessible. Please review the Ally FAQs for more information about the accessibility indicators on course content and alternative formats.

Check out these 3 PIVOT resources to prepare for summer online teaching.

• If you are an instructor, and your name is not associated with the course you are teaching in the SOC, please see your Departmental Scheduling Coordinator to resolve the issue. Once you are listed in the SOC, your Bb course shell will be created automatically. 
• If you and your Department Scheduling Coordinator believe you are correctly assigned as the instructor of record in the SOC and you do not see your course shell in Blackboard, please submit a Request Tracker (RT) ticket via my.umbc.edu/help.
• If you need a Bb shell for a research or independent study course, please submit a new course request.

Instructors who teach multiple sections of the same course will find those enrollments merged into one Bb course shell. These sections may be split upon request by an RT ticket, which we recommend submitting at least one week before the semester starts, if not as soon as courses are created in Blackboard.

Student enrollment in Bb mirrors the official registration in SA and updates hourly. However, courses are not accessible to students by default until the instructor of record makes them available.

As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:

• PIVOT | Academic Continuity | Keep On Teaching | Student Technology Resources 

• Check our extensive FAQ collection 

• What’s new in Ultra? | Known Issues 

• Open a ticket via RT

• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups

• Request a consult with instructional technology staff

There have been reports to the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) that a scammer is calling people and claiming to be from UMBC.The scammer is said to be trying to run an insurance scam and is calling from <14438873438>.  The caller ID shows up as UMBC.

According to usa.gov here are some helpful tips to protect yourself from telephone scams. For more information please see the link below.

• You can register your phone number with the National Do Not Call registry. If you continue to receive telemarketing calls after you register they are most likely scams.

• Be wary of calls claiming that you have won a prize or vacation.

• Hang up or do not answer any suspicious phone calls.

• Be cautious of caller ID as scammers can spoof or change the phone number that appears on the screen.

• Do not give into any pressure from the scammer to take immediate actions.

• Do not say anything if the scammer begins by asking “Can you hear me?” as it is stated that this is a common tactic for scammers to record and have proof of you saying “yes”.

• Do not provide any financial or personal information to the caller.

• Do not send money over the phone especially if the caller asks for it to be wire transferred or with prepaid cards.

The usa.gov article also gives a few links to report telephone scams.

• The Federal Trade Commision (FTC): https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/?pid=A 

• The Do Not Call Registry: https://www.donotcall.gov/ 

• The Federal Communications Commision (FCC): https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us 

• You can also report any scam related to UMBC to security@umbc.edu 

What to do now?

If you received this or a similar scam and have provided any banking or financial information, please notify your bank or financial institution immediately. If you have been sent a check, you should not attempt to cash or deposit it. If you have deposited a check already, please contact your bank and tell them that it may be part of a scam.

Whether you responded to the scam or not, please report it to security@umbc.edu. If any part of the scam was through email please provide full email headers as well. We will also keep track of any other information you submit about the scammers, such as their phone numbers. If you were sent a check or other materials, please send pictures of it and the envelope they came in.

For more information from usa.gov please visit:

https://www.usa.gov/common-scams-frauds 

How do I forward full email headers?

https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970 

To read more articles published by DoIT Security please visit: 

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?tag=notice.    

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/home/covid-19-news/?tag=covid19  

The Department of Information Technology (DoIT) has been notified of a scam. The scammer, impersonating a member of the UMBC staff, asks users to deposit a fake check. Attached below is a sample of the message and the check. Please note that the name of the recipient was removed for privacy reasons.

__________________________________________________________________________

From: Lisa Drouillard 

Date: Thu, Apr 22, 2021 at 8:42 AM

Subject: Paycheck

To: <Your Email>

Hello <Your Name>

Follow the instruction below to deposit  the check

Print out at 67% and Cut to a ( check size/shape ) At the back of your check Endorse by writing Your 

Full name

Mobile Deposit Only

Your account number

Sign.

Once you done you make a mobile deposit

Thank You 

Account Officer

Lisa Drouillard

Account Officer

__________________________________________________________________________

If you have received this email, DO NOT DEPOSIT THE CHECK. If you have ALREADY DEPOSITED the check, please contact your bank and tell them that it may be part of a scam.

IMMEDIATELY forward the email and the check to security@umbc.edu along with the email headers.

Instruction on how to locate the email headers can be found here: https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970 

Follow us on myUMBC:https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/itsecurity

The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) has received reports of another administrative assistant job scam. Below is an example of this job scam email in which the scammer is claiming to be Robert Williams.  Mr. Williams does work for UMBC, but not in the Health Administration and Policy Program (HAPP).  He is not advertising for an administrative assistant. He did not send this message.  The From field is a fake.  The phone number below is not his.  

This is a scam.  

The scammer is attempting to establish contact in order to fake an offer of employment, build trust, and then get you to purchase something expensive (e.g., iTunes gift cards, cryptocurrency, etc.) that can be transmitted back to them by text message or email.  At that time, you will receive a picture of a check to print and scan for deposit using your bank-by-phone app.  The check will bounce but your bank will take from 3-5 days to tell you this.  Your money will be gone.  You will not get it back.

You can avoid all of that.  If you receive this or any similar message, please do not respond.

What to do now?

If you do receive this or a similar scam, please DO NOT respond any further or click on any URLs. If you have provided any banking or financial information, please notify your bank or financial institution immediately. If you have been sent a check, you should not attempt to cash or deposit it. If you have deposited a check already, please contact your bank and tell them that it may be part of a scam.

Whether you responded to the scam or not, please forward the message (with the email headers) to security@umbc.edu. We will also keep track of any other information you submit about the scammers, such as their phone numbers. If you were sent a check or other materials, please send pictures of it and the envelope they came in.

How do I forward full email headers?

https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970 

To read more articles published by DoIT Security please visit: 

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?tag=notice.    

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/home/covid-19-news/?tag=covid19  

The scam email below has recently been reported to the Division of Information Technology (DoIT). The example below has the scammer claiming to be UMBC’s Sarah Chard but please note that the scammer impersonated many different people during this campaign.

The scam email above is asking users to help them because the scammer claims that they are currently in a meeting. Through different reports it has been seen that the scammer is claiming to be not only UMBC’s Sarah Chard but also David Mitch, Amy Froide, Vandana Janeja, Philip Farabaugh, Michael Hayden, Mark Marten and Jean Fernandez. 

Even though this scam email campaign seems to be coming from UMBC accounts, please note that within the headers it shows that the reply-to is <hiredes111@gmail.com> and the X-sender is <robert.baker@westworksstudios.com>. 

The scammer is asking for users to reply with their cell phone number. In the past, similar scams have asked users who replied to purchase gift cards or crypto currencies. If you have received this or a similar message, please do not respond or make any purchases for the scammers.

What to do now?

If you do receive this or a similar scam, please DO NOT respond any further or click on any URLs. If you have provided any banking or financial information, please notify your bank or financial institution immediately. If you have been sent a check, you should not attempt to cash or deposit it. If you have deposited a check already, please contact your bank and tell them that it may be part of a scam.

Whether you responded to the scam or not, please forward the message (with the email headers) to security@umbc.edu. We will also keep track of any other information you submit about the scammers, such as their phone numbers. If you were sent a check or other materials, please send pictures of it and the envelope they came in.

How do I forward full email headers?

https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970 

To read more articles published by DoIT Security please visit: 

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/critical/?tag=notice.    

https://itsecurity.umbc.edu/home/covid-19-news/?tag=covid19