Several Bloomsburg students have now received at least two phishing spam e-mails to their university e-mail accounts. These e-mails request information about their usernames, passwords, a “secret question” and a “secret answer.” Student have been directed by the Office of Technology to not respond to any such e-mail because it is phishing spam. The office said that one possible way to solve the problem is to prevent all internet e-mails from coming into student mailboxes, but that would also block all internet e-mails that are legitimate as well.
The last e-mail was sent with the subject “WELLCOME TO BLOOMU.WEBMAIL,” and the address from which is was sent was not a bloomu.edu address.
“In the case of this one, it is simply a regular spam e-mail that made it into your inbox and it is extemely hard to identify this automatically as a phishing e-mail ahead of time,” reported the Office of Technology in an email sent to students who received the second spamming email.
The e-mail further explained the steps that were taken. Since a large number of students appear to have phishing spam to their student accounts, the office used the reply-to off-campus address to prevent any mail to be received by the spamming source.
Students are advised to change their password if they responded to any spam e-mails or if they feel their account is not secure. If students are not able to log onto their accounts or need help changing their passwords, they are encouraged to call the HELP desk at 570-389-4357.
Who is behind these phishing expeditions, and how are they penetrating our firewalls?
The faculty emails have been compromisted at least 2x in last couple of weeks.
Are any other State System campuses reporting similar threats?