UCL Computer Security Newsletter - January 2007

The purpose of this newsletter is to keep all security reps and other
interested parties informed about what is happening around UCL
regarding computer security. Further information from the Computer
Security Team is always available at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/cert.

1. CST staffing

Please note, Simon Baker has now left UCL and we are currently
running short-staffed (approx. 2/3 full strength). We regret it may
take us longer to respond to you. We will aim to maintain our
preventive work, but may have to refuse non-urgent meetings or
additional work until we are back up to full strength next month.

2. Updates

Thanks to Bob Muid for the following:

There is an upgrade to F-Secure Anti-Virus Client Security to version
6.03. This cures the problem of F-Secure deleting attachments sent by
email from Apple Macs. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/fsecure/FSecure.html#CS6

In the new year there will be a complete upgrade to F-Secure, version
7. It will incorporate anti-virus, a desktop firewall, enhanced anti-
spyware and Rootkit elimination technology. The new version will also
include an intrusion prevention system that combines advanced
heuristics and run-time behavioural blocking to work with
conventional definition based scanning systems. In theory this
approach should reduce the amount of false alarms and the integration
into application control should reduce the amount of pop-ups.
Version 7 will also fully support Microsoft Vista computers.

For current users of Microsoft Vista there is a beta version of F-
Secure to protect your machines. See http://support.f-secure.com/avvista

3. New CST PGP key

On our web pages.

4. Institutional Firewall

It is UCL policy that all departments will be protected by the
institutional firewall. We are over half way there going by network
prefixes alone. Since we've, in the main, been dealing with the /24
first, we can confidently say that we are well over half way there
with respect to hosts/people protected.

5. General

Please note all correspondence from the UCL Computer Security Team is
digitally signed either with personal PGP keys or the CERT team key
(public keys available from http://www.ucl.ac.uk/cert/contacts.html).

This newsletter and previous ones are available at
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/cert/cst-newsletters/index.html.

We welcome feedback on the content and organisation of documents on
our web page.