wireless network down for upgrades between 4-5 PM today (4/8/2014)

The district's wireless network will be down today for about 20 minutes sometime between 4:00 - 5:00 PM so that we can upgrade the wireless LAN controllers. You should plan to use a computer with a wired network connection during this time. 

I apologize for the short notice.

Update on delayed email delivery

Google has released some information regarding the delayed email deliver that occurred last week.

The problem with Postini Services should be resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.A copy of the quarantined messages will start to be reprocessed in the next hour. Engineers will start to redeliver messages in small batches. It's then expected that it will take several hours until all messages are reprocessed. Messages unaffected by the original issue and already properly classified as spam will also be reprocessed. A new copy of the affected messages will go through a full regular Postini scan using proper customer configuration settings and filters, as present at the re-delivery time. Reprocessed messages that are still considered as spam will be placed in quarantine again, creating a duplicate entry in the quarantine. The process will not clear out the Postini quarantine of affected message copies; message copies already quarantined will remain quarantined.

Based on this, it appears that in addition to email messages which were intentionally quarantined due to virus or spam, some (many) messages that should not have been quarantined were being incorrectly quarantined.

You can read more about this particular incident at http://www.google.com/appsstatus#hl=en&v=issue&sid=11&iid=f4d40ff81521acea4e58014d7a83ffeb

Although this was the result of what Google considers an error, we still get notifications on a daily basis of virus and spam outbreaks which Google stops from being delivered. These can also cause delayed delivery because Google blocks the offending IP address, and that IP address may be the source of legitimate emails as well. In fact, it's possible that email messages from OSD staff are originating from the offending IP address, due to the globally distributed nature of Gmail's infrastructure.

Action: block '550 mailbox unavailable'
Source: 113.162.75.147
Time: 2014/03/13 10:01:21 GMT

As always, if you have more questions you can contact the IT department.

Infinite Campus updated to version 1410.2

Upgrade complete
Version: E.1410.2
DB Refresh: No
Requested Date: 2014-03-09 17:00
Scheduled Date: 2014-03-09 17:00

Resolution: 

Automated update complete.

Delayed email delivery

Some users (myself included) have experienced delayed email delivery, ranging from hours to days. It appears this is due to a number of spam attacks aimed at our domain. When this happens, Google temporarily suspends email originating from the attacking IP address until the attack is stopped. 

As a brief historical context, email was never designed to be an instant form of communication. By design, mail servers are set to try to deliver email, and if they cannot, try again hours later, until a certain amount of time (the old default was two days) before giving up and sending a failure notice back to the sender. So although we have become accustomed to instantaneous delivery, it is not really designed that way.

I'll post other updates on this topic to this blog.

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Updates: SPAM attacks

Action: block '571 spam source blocked'
Source: 182.72.181.33
Time: 2014/03/11 06:41:15 GMT

Action: block '571 spam source blocked'
Source: 186.118.195.40
Time: 2014/03/08 01:04:44 GMT

CryptoLocker Threat

Last week a Wisconsin school district was hit with a computer malware called “Cryptolocker”. This malware accesses files on your computer and/or server and encrypts them. The attackers demand money, and if the payment is not received, the malware will prevent the files from being accessed again.  The specific act in Wisconsin impacted over 40,000 files at the school district. 

This malware is spread through an email that appears to be a tracking notification from UPS or FedEx. This tactic will change soon, so please don't think this has anything to do specifically with shipping companies. 

Regardless of the type of message, you should ALWAYS be careful whenever you get an email containing a hyperlink, especially if it's unexpected. The best practice is to NOT click the link in the email, but to type the web address of the company (UPS, FedEx, Amazon, or whatever) into a different browser window. This reduces the threat of a hidden URL.

I don't necessarily think this one is much worse than a lot of other ones. But this serves as a good general reminder to be very careful about what you click. 

The school district network has a network security system that should help stop many threats, but your vigilance and caution are the best defense.

Here’s a link provided by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to more information on the malware. 

http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/02/ftc-fbi-warn-consumers-about-cryptolocker-new-breed-computer

web site schedule maintenance the morning of Saturday, 2/15

We will be performing routine server maintenance on our website ob Saturday, February 15, 2014 from 7:00 AM - 11:00 AM. While there will not be a complete outage during the maintenance window, connectivity will be sporadic during the required server reboots. We appreciate your understanding.

An even better fix for showing data in IC

Infinite Campus support tells us the following:

With the 1402 update, districts have had to have all users clear their history/cache if they use a browser that doesn't allow the settings to be established so that the browser history clears on exit or if they don't have their browser settings set so that the history does clear on exit. 

The link below explains how to clear the browser history/cache for all supported browsers and OS. Firefox and IE browsers contain the setting where it can be set to clear on exit. In Safari, the way to clear cache/history automatically is by turning on Private Browsing. For any Chrome users, they will need to clear it manually and should do so on a regular basis. 

https://community.infinitecampus.com/kb/display/DOC/Recommended+Browser+Settings