Below is an example of a phishing email that has been reported to the Department of Information Technology (DoIT). 

The phishing email below has the subject “For UMBC faculty/staff: Dean hides author's identity of his dissertation” and is from <kkchan3275@aol.com>. There are also similar versions of this scam sent from other email addresses, for example <ash.chen@yandex.com> and <chu.ben@yandex.com>. 

Please note some of the grammatical mistakes in the message above, this can be a red flag for phishing email. Some other red flags are that the message is asking the user to share the message with other UMBC faculty and staff. Also, the email is not from a UMBC domain email address but instead is coming from AOL.

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 or not 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 

To All Taki Users,

The Taki cluster will be down from 8AM on Monday, January 25 to 5PM on Tuesday, January 26. This downtime will allow HPCF Administrators and an external consultant to upgrade critical software packages that manage various aspects of the cluster computing environment.

We do not expect that the upgrades will take the entire allotted time. The extra time allows us to navigate any difficulties with the upgrades. We will update the user community when the cluster is back online with a similar posting to this myUMBC Group.

Please note: All running jobs will be terminated, so plan long-running jobs accordingly.

Thank you for your understanding,

Roy Prouty

HPCF System Administrator
Research Computing Specialist

It’s a new year UMBC’s Division of Information Technology (DoIT) is still seeing scammers sending out phishing emails offering fake jobs to students. Below is an example of one of these job scam emails.

The email has the subject “PART TIME JOB OFFER” and is offering a fake part-time job to CISCO Systems. Above is an example of the first email the scammers would send to students, the goal of this email is to try and get the students to reply. 

In past phishing campaigns similar to the one above, if the student responds showing interest the scammers would ask the student for more information like phone number, personal email address, home address, date of birth, etc. If the student would provide any of this information the scammers have been known to start texting the student as well as send a fraudulent check to the provided address. If you have received a check from this or a similar scam please do not try to deposit the check.

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 or not 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 Division of Information Technology (DoIT) has been notified that a scammer is sending out phishing emails claiming to offer a part-time job as an Administrative Assistant the UMBC’s Academic Success Center.  The offer is a fake. 

Here is an example of the scam:

In the example above the email is sent from <owens0101@gmail.com> . This is not a UMBC address.  UMBC addresses end in “@umbc.edu”. The phishing email itself is claiming to offer students a job as an administrative assistant. The scammer asks the victim to use text messaging which leaves no record of the communications in UMBC systems.
If you receive this email or anything similar, do not respond.

The Money

Scams like this operate by having the victim make purchases with their own funds while promising to reimburse them later. The reimbursement will generally be in the form of a check or a money order. When you attempt to deposit the check or money order into your bank account, your bank will notify you that it is not valid. It will bounce. You will have lost whatever money you have spent to that point. In many cases, this loss has exceeded $1000.00

The names and job titles appearing in this correspondence do belong to actual UMBC staff, but this information is readily available from the UMBC web site and can be used to make the scam seem more realistic.

Recently, a fake payment was made through an image of a check sent in email. The victim was instructed to print it, cut the image out in the shape of a check, sign it, and deposit it using a mobile banking app. (See below.)

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 or not 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 

Below is an example of a job scam phishing email that was recently reported to the Division of Information Technology (DoIT). The scam email below has the subject “UMBC COVID-19 UPDATE” and is claiming to offer fake jobs from Corestaff Services to UMBC students. 

The goal of this phishing email is to try and get students to reply showing interest in the fake job. DoIT has seen similar scams in which the student’s reply is followed by another email asking for more personal information such as the student’s mailing address, full name, phone number, and date of birth. 

If the student responds again with their personal information, the scammers have been known to start texting the student as well as sending a fraudulent check to the provided postal address. If you received a check from this or a similar scam please do not try to deposit the fraudulent check. 

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 or not 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 as well.

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 Division of Information Technology (DoIT) has been notified that a scammer is sending out phishing emails claiming to offer an interim personal assistant job available. The offer is a fake.  Below is an example of this scam.

In the example above it can be seen that the email is sent from <DJ2205831@pusdk12.org> and has the subject “University of maryland, baltimore county apply for spring winter p/t jobs work from school/home offer for students 2021”. The phishing email itself is claiming to offer students a job as the scammer’s interim personal assistant. The scammer is asking that applicants respond by emailing their personal information.  If you have received this email please do not respond.

Please note that in the phishing email above the scammer states that they can not give an interview.  This is a red flag as most jobs would want some sort of interview or meeting process or at least a telephone call  before hiring anyone. Another red flag is that the email uses words like “high important that you reply,” this gives the user a sense of urgency which can be a sign of phishing and job scam emails.

Of course, the terrible grammar and punctuation are not what you would expect from a professor of medicine, either.  It is also odd that the message asks the applicant to respond to boseannette85@gmail.com when the message itself came from a different address, DJ2205831@pusdk12.org.

Always be alert for inconsistencies, especially when contacted unexpectedly, especially when contacted by strangers, and most especially when money is involved.

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 or not 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