Techfoot

Like many academics, I think that many security policies and procedures are a tad draconian and based on superstition rather than evidence. One of my pets that I often rail about is the requirement that individuals change passwords on some fixed schedule; I’m still looking for any evidence that these requirements actually make our institutions more secure. In my own case, I’m much more likely to try skimp on password complexity or write the new one down in those cases where I’m forced to change.

Every once in a while, though, I get a graphic reminder of why folks with more daily responsibility for security are more paranoid (which may not be too strong a word) than I am. Several of those reminders have been delivered this week as faculty and staff have been hit with a barrage of phishing schemes. At least seven members of the community, including at least a faculty member or two, have succumbed and provided their userids and passwords. Almost immediately their accounts were attacked by zombie armies, hundreds of sessions were opened and hundreds of thousands of spam messages were generated.

A Botnet (also known as a zombie army) is a number of Internet computers that, although their owners are unaware of it, have been set up to forward transmissions (including spam or viruses) to other computers on the Internet. Any such computer is referred to as a zombie - in effect, a computer “robot” or “bot” that serves the wishes of some master spam or virus originator. Most computers compromised in this way are home-based.

In these seven instances, millions of messages were generated. Cleaning up the resulting mess takes lots of engineering time–though unfortunately with practice we’re cutting it from days to hours. Mail response for local users slows dramatically and huge internet service providers like AOL and Comcast blacklist the college domain as part of their spam management process. Reopening delivery may take a couple of days and untold amounts of mail from college addresses may be dumped to the bit bucket.

If you care about your colleagues and being a good citizen of the community, don’t provide your id and password by using a link in an email message.

Humanities High Performance Computing: “”

For the last three weeks I’ve been immersed in the world of HPC–High Performance Computing. HPC is that parallel universe where researchers run programs that take five days of processing, where tiny jobs only require 12-15 processors, where terabyte drives fill up in matters of hours and where shouting at and threatening colleagues is considered a perfectly acceptable way of communicating. Now humanities scholars are being invited play in the HPC sandbox too.

The NEH Office of Digital Humanities has just launched a resource page for Humanities High Performance Computing. This new resource is designed to attract scholars in the humanities and social sciences who have masses unstructured data that needs to be sorted, mined, or visualized to be better understood. Programs include a series of grants (deadline is July 15th for award in January 2009) and invitations to access to the National Science Foundation’s teragrid.

William and Mary has a HPC operation that has recently become a part of our academic and research support for faculty. Like the folks at the NEH, we’re hoping that a broader range of faculty will take advantage of the college’s investment in these high performance tools.

Welcome - Faculty Academy 2008

One of the spring events that I’ve come to look forward the most is the Faculty Academy for Teaching and Learning at the University of Mary Washington. This year I’ll be attending as an “esteemed guest presenter” and sucking in all the energy and creativity that event fosters. I’m honored to follow in the footsteps of such innovators as Alan Levine and Barbara Ganley and trying to figure out what I can add to the mix that will justify the invitation.

One contribution that I might make to the gathering is a bona fide historical artifact. I can talk persuasively about such topics as why the Commodore Vic 20 is a better home computer than the Apple II or a lament about why no one has been able to come up with a laptop that’s even close to the functionality of my Radio Shack Model 100.

One of the nice things that the organizers of the faculty academy provide is a widget that gives the countdown to the event. (29 days, 16 hours and 17 minutes as I start writing this.). The countdown serves as a constant reminder that I have a workshop and presentation to do in front of a whole bunch of people, most with laptops connected to Twitter and who aren’t afraid to use them! I’ve always felt a responsibility to try to connect when I’m making a presentation, and the special place that the Faculty Academy has assumed in the Academic Technology community really turns up the heat to contribute something meaningful. As a genuine historical artifact, my first thought for a workshop title is “Ten Ways You Can Use Vi to Get More Done and Enjoy Life More!” But then, I’ve got 29 days 15 hours and 30 minutes to reconsider.