A new type of sophisticated — and convincing — malicious e-mail
attack has targeted university accounts. Twice this academic
year (Oct. 29 and Feb. 8) some U-M e-mail users have received a
message that includes a logo associated with a real, although
former, U-M organization. Known as phishing, such attacks are
employed by scammers in an attempt to gather personal
information from users. Anyone receiving an e-mail that looks
suspicious is asked to go to
safecomputing.umich.edu/main/phishing_alerts/ for the latest
list of phishing messages sent to university e-mail accounts, or
contact firstname.lastname@example.org. “This message attracted
responses from at least 30 users and possibly others we don’t
know about. We contacted those we could identify to alert them
it was a scam,” says Will Rhee, one of the university’s user
advocates. “Not everyone who responded gave away their real
password.” Besides using the old Information Technology Central
Services logo, this e-mail also employed a convincing re-
direction