Spear Phishing Emails to U of U Addresses
To: All University of Utah Campus Members
From: Chris Kidd, Chief Information Security and Privacy Officer
Subject: Spear Phishing Emails to U of U Addresses
Date: April 15, 2008
Recently, an email with the Subject: URGENT EMAIL NOTICE was received by U of U faculty, staff and students indicating that the "University Of Utah(r) Webmail Service" had experienced some problems and users "are expected to undergo an account holders re-validation process in order to sort out some problems that may be encountered in our email service to you." The email requested that users send their email address, password and a security question/answer in reply.
The sending email address (hhvhgvvvhjjnjnjcc@gmail.com On Behalf Of University Of Utah(r) Webmail Service) is NOT a University email address and the message was not sent out by a University entity. The email is a targeted "spear phishing" email.
Immediate Action:
* If you have opened AND replied to the email, change your password immediately through either the Campus Information System: http://www.cis.utah.edu
and/or through your departmental email system. Notify Information Security Operations at 
so that we can verify the integrity of your account.
* If you did not reply to the email, your account has not been compromised. Delete the message. Contact the Campus Help Desk (581-4000 option 1) or the ITS Help Desk (587-6000) if you have any
questions.
* Please notify others in your area to do the same.
We are notifying you to protect your accounts from being compromised and misused. Remember, the University of Utah would NEVER ask you to provide this type of information through an email system. The University's Information Security Operations team takes steps to block phishing web sites and email. Please send any emails you think are "phishy" as attachments to and/or postmaster@utah.edu. We can then work to prevent future attacks, but you should never assume that all phishers are blocked. Please protect yourselves from "phishing" attacks.
Thank you,
Chris Kidd
Chief Information Security and Privacy Officer
Compliance Office
The University of Utah
www.compliance.utah.edu
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Distribution of this message was approved by Stephen Hess, Associate Academic Vice President for Information Technology, University of Utah Phone (801) 581-3100, 101 Wasatch Drive, Eccles Broadcast Center, Salt Lake City, UT 84112
